Chaos Manor Musings

The politically correct spin is coming like a tidal wave. He is a crazy guy...

2009-11-06T14:50:03-06:00

The politically correct spin is coming like a tidal wave. He is a crazy guy who happens to be a Muslim. All of that misses the point: he was disloyal to the United States, and said so openly and many times; yet he remained a commissioned officer of the United States. That is the point that is being overlooked. Whether the disloyalty is due to a psychotic episode or some other cause is not important.

Friday Mail Roundup 8

2009-11-06T14:30:09-06:00

speculation

2009-11-06T14:30:08-06:00

speculation

Jerry,

I hadn't read Dr Beckmann's theory in detail but I read some of the things he published about it. Jeffery Kooistra, who currently does alternating science columns in Analog, is also a modern ether theorist.

The bottom line as I see it (recall that at present I'm more an interested and educated dilettante in the subject rather than an active practioner, though that could change in January when the current job goes belly-up), is:

(a) Recall my "Einstein's fallacy" argument: dynamics is about geometric relationships; however, modeling dynamics geometrically does not mean that the underlying mechanism is geometric.

(b) The logical conclusion based on today's data and theory is that the underlying mechanism is more likely to be quantum theoretic, but that is an assumption; the cat is not yet belled in terms of a "final theory."

(c) The "waves in a medium" argument may come back to photons, or at least the concept of duality which underlying quantum mechanics: each particle carries the mass (more accurately, mass-energy) which supports its wavelike nature.

(d) There is accumulating evidence that Einstein's theory is incorrect, at least insofar as the concept that the speed of light is an absolute limit are concerned -- the European experiments showing superluminal transmission of RF signals, yesterday's report about reversed Cherenkov radiation in engineered "metamaterials." "Dark energy" and "dark matter" themselves are postulated because the visible energy and mass of the universe do not account for the observed gravitational dynamics on a universal scale. (Conversely, there are people who believe that the cosmological consequences of electromagnetism are not adequately understood, and I don't know the extent to which that might account for the observed discrepancies.) I also include here the papers from Los Alamos citing that the speed of electrostatic fields switching on is significantly greater than c (as opposed to the speed of radiating fields which by relativity are equal to c), and the Los Alamos results, never formally published, which Dr. Forward cited in several papers -- and was once gracious enough to speak to me personally about by phone -- suggesting that neutrinos always travel faster than light.

(e) Inadequate attention has been given to the issues that Hank Stein raised bout the speed of gravity. Landis and others have published on the web (years ago) essays stating that general relativity can adequately explain the discrepancies, but from what I've seen that may be a circular argument: the discrepancies always depend on the relationship between the velocity of the body in the test field and the position of the gravitating body (e.g that, as in Newtonian physics, the direction of the force always appears to be towards the instantaneous position of the gravitating body rather than towards the position where it was when the "gravity" was emitted, regardless of the velocities involved), and I suspect that such an relationship would be preserved independently of the speed of gravity.

All of this doesn't answer your question directly, but the bottom line is that there is nothing to preclude a universal field which has some, if not all, of the properties ascribed to the luminiferous ether, with the principle exception being the ether drift as anticipated by Michelson and Morley. A google of the subject appears to be fruitful as regards the modern theories.

Sincerely,

Jim Woosley

The Michelson Morley Experiment showed there is no ether wind resulting from the motion of the earth in its orbit. I have seen nothing that says it ruled out an ether entangled with the Earth's gravitational field. Einstein didn't say there that ether had been disproved: he said that the special theory explained the experimental data with no need for the ether hypothesis.

A Response to Colonel Couvillon on UAV

2009-11-06T14:30:07-06:00

A Response to Colonel Couvillon on UAV

Re. Col Couvillon’s gloating…

The average fighter pilot will accept obsolescence on the day that the average Army tank driver accepts unmanned main battle tanks as a suitable replacement for manned vehicles, the USN replaces their fleet with unmanned ships/boats, and an infantry officer hands in his sidearm in favor of a seat at a stateside console, since on-site presence is apparently not worth the cost or risk and our communications are good enough to substitute for actual presence.

The very same Army, Navy, and Marine folks who are adamant about the value of “boots on the ground” are the ones the most vocal about the uselessness and imminent demise of manned aircraft. Is that inter-service competition, hypocrisy, or ignorance? The arguments seem pretty adversarial, and the attacks on the “fighter pilot attitude” are far more personal than factual.

For my own opinion, I am confident that any military reliant on unmanned ANYTHING will find itself without any combat capability on the second or third day of the war. You were at least partially right in your mercenary series books… it’s too easy to knock a satellite out of the sky and our unmanned systems will always require non-line-of-sight comm. That, and even stealth aircraft can be shot down by anyone who has the ability to look out the window and SEE the target, so the force who can put real people in the sky will maintain an anti-stealth capability beyond that of any force relying on unmanned systems.

Remember, the pride of a modern F-15 pilot is no longer in the number of kills he has. We have no F-15 aces, and probably never will. Rather, it is in the fact that it has been decades since our ground forces have suffered a single loss to enemy air activity. It surprises hell out of me to hear anyone in the Army supporting handing that responsibility over to unmanned vehicles that can be rendered ineffective by a 50 gal drum of BBs lofted into the path of a comm. satellite. It’s a bit like giving an infantry soldier a gun that won’t work without an operational datalink back to the states, and asking him to be pleased with his new capability.

Then again, maybe the Army’s next main battle tank will be unmanned. The issues are exactly the same, and “everyone” agrees that there remains no substitute for human eyes and a brain on-scene when immediate action is required. But it’s too much fun to blame fighter pilots for everything and make operational recommendations for another service that wouldn’t be remotely considered for one’s own field of expertise. In the end, it won’t affect me in the slightest but our ground troops will bear the burden the first time we meet a halfway competent foe on the battlefield and they need some air support.

No one who thinks seriously about it begrudges USAF its honors in protecting the ground army from enemy action. USAF was superb at this from WW II, and can boast that no ground troops were lost to enemy air action in the Korean war. (Alas, I know for a fact that ground troops were lost to air action by USAF and USMC aircraft, but that's another story. On the other hand, USMC was damned effective in supporting USMC on the ground, and many Army people wished they could get that effective support; again another story.)

The criticism is that USAF insists on keeping the ground support mission while it really doesn't want it. Had USAF handed over the Warthogs after the First Gulf War there there wouldn't be so much glee among the brown shoes when the blue suits take one.

I am no fan of turning the military mission over to legions of robots. I am a fan of giving the ground support mission to the Army.

: Obesity, poor education big obstacles to military recruiting,

2009-11-06T14:30:06-06:00

: Obesity, poor education big obstacles to military recruiting,

Jerry

According to the W Post, obesity and poor education are big obstacles to military recruiting:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/
04/AR2009110402899.html

Perhaps soon we'll have an army like Rome's, just before it fell: a bunch of wimps not really up for a fight.

The Legions kept Rome going long after the center could no longer hold. But it is true: in the days of the Republic, Roman soldiers killed enemies until their arms were tired and raised new armies instantly after defeat. By the end, the Legions just weren't up to the fight. But that degeneration took a long time. Our Legions remain competent and loyal. So far.

The 'no electronic device use' issue on commercial airliners.

2009-11-06T14:30:05-06:00

The 'no electronic device use' issue on commercial airliners.

It has nothing to do with interference at all, it has nothing to do with technology at all. After all, the major carriers are all scrambling to allow in-flight mobile phone service via a TCP/IP-based satellite gateway, as well as Internet access (Lufthansa had this for a while and it was great; the problem is that they bought far more equipment than was needed due to networking vendor oversell, and so the service wasn't able to turn a profit).

The reason you're told to 'turn off electronic devices' is simply about control.

The aircrew want to be sure that you understand that, instead of being a paying customer who has rights and privileges, you're an unwanted guest whom they grudgingly allow a seat on their fine aircraft as long as you do as you're told. They want to avoid any possible liability resulting from a frivolous lawsuit filed by a passenger who was too stupid to understand how to put on his seatbelt, and who would claim that the aircrew should've prevented him from listening to his iPod/ iPhone and forced him to pay attention to the safety briefing the rest of us a) don't need and b) have heard 10,000 times before.

The secondary hidden agenda is that remarkably similar groups of delusional rent-seeking leeches within each airline company believe that they can somehow force people to abandon their personal electronic use due to abuse of the catch-all 'you must obey any command from the aircrew, no matter how absurd, or we'll send you to Guantanamo' laws passed in almost every country after 9/11, and instead make use of their insipid in-flight entertainment systems, for which they believe they can charge you.

It won't work, of course, but that won't stop them from trying. Here in Asia, everyone pretty much ignores these pronouncements, and as long as you don't flaunt the fact that you're ignoring their nonsensical ukases on this topic, the aircrew will simply ignore your transgressions.

The sole (and unsurprising) exception I've observed is Chinese airlines flying on domestic internal Chinese routes; taking a photo out the aircraft window is punishable by a term in the gulag, as China consider maps and aerial photography as covered under state secrets regulations, as was the case in the USSR. On international Chinese flights, everyone ignores these ridiculous strictures.

Roland Dobbins

Reaping the Whirlwind

2009-11-06T14:50:02-06:00

Reaping the Whirlwind

Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

England was fond of declaring various actions treasonable, and convicting people of treason for activities that could be described as "loyal opposition." The Constitution nailed down the definition of Federal treason.

I would presume that arming oneself and shooting 43 US soldiers is (1) levying war against the United States, and (2) an overt act, and that Major Hassan should be charged with treason. I would further argue that prior to his actions he had made a number of overt acts which were evidence of adherence to their enemies, and he could have been charged with treason for those; but I won't argue the case too strongly.

I will argue that political correctness led to the madness of having someone who does not believe in the legitimacy of the war in Iraq practice psychiatry by counseling some of the most severely traumatized in the Iraqi war: that the instant he began to show doubts about the legitimacy of the War and an unwillingness to be deployed to participate in it, he ought at the very least to have been stripped of his commission and suffer whatever other consequences of failing to fulfill his part of the contract under which the United States paid for both his undergraduate and his medical education in return for his service as a medical officer.

Richard Weaver wrote an important book called Ideas Have Consequences. It's one book that everyone ought to read as an undergraduate, but the title makes an important point. Political correctness was the cause of the Fort Hood Massacre, and we ought not forget that. The fact that someone could go through -- at government expense -- an undergraduate education with ROTC, then medical school at a US military institution, and remain a traitor to the United States is a significant warning. A very significant warning that the idea of Political Correctness has consequences we can't afford. Corruption of the Legions is one danger the Republic cannot endure.

The Legions remain faithful; but for how long when their officers are no longer faithful? Hassan had been through ROTC and a US armed forces medical school as a commissioned officer. Why was his failure of loyalty to the armed forces not detected earlier? But of course he was a Muslim, and it would not be politically correct to wash someone out of an armed forces medical school for lack of loyalty to the armed forces of these United States.

We sow the wind. We have reaped one whirlwind.

Sary Shagan Unveiled.

2009-11-06T14:30:04-06:00

Sary Shagan Unveiled.

<http://geimint.blogspot.com/2009/11/sary-shagan-unveiled.html>

-- Roland Dobbins

I can recall when men risked their lives for photographs of that place... We saw tests of their ABM program conducted there.

"A colleague of mine spotted the anomaly on Google Maps...

2009-11-06T12:40:05-06:00

"A colleague of mine spotted the anomaly on Google Maps, and I thought 'I've got to go there'."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/
google/6474746/Mystery-of-Argleton-the-
Google-town-that-only-exists-online.html

-- Roland Dobbins

Thursday Mail Roundup 9

2009-11-06T12:40:03-06:00

2 Studies Gauge Effect of New York's Posted Calories http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03nutrition.html...

2009-11-06T12:40:02-06:00

2 Studies Gauge Effect of New York's Posted Calories http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03nutrition.html ]

How Posted Calories Affect Food Orders By RONI CARYN RABIN

Just a few weeks ago, independent researchers reported that New York City's ground-breaking calorie labeling law had had absolutely no effect on the caloric content of meals bought at chain restaurants in poor neighborhoods. Last week, city health officials delivered a more upbeat assessment, saying New Yorkers ordered fewer calories at four chains--Au Bon Pain, KFC, McDonald's and Starbucks--after the law went into effect last year.

The changes reported by the city health department's preliminary data were modest, indicating little change either way in the number of calories bought at 8 of 13 chains surveyed, and a significant increase in calories ordered at Subway, which researchers attributed to a continuing $5 promotional special on footlong sandwiches that has tripled demand for them.

Although the findings of the two reports appear to contradict one another, researchers said differences in focus and size might explain the discrepancies. <clip>

E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy.

2009-11-05T14:10:11-06:00

E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy.

<http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_hirsch.html>

-- Roland Dobbins

I recommend this one to everyone's attention.

Solar Power in Space

2009-11-05T14:10:10-06:00

Solar Power in Space

Jerry,

What happens when something flies through the microwave power down-link?

Bob Holmes

This deserves a longer answer but I am out of time. In essence, nothing. The energy density is low enough that birds get warm and fly out. There's considerable literature on this.

Space Elevator

2009-11-05T14:10:09-06:00

Space Elevator

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091105/
ap_on_sc/us_space_elevator_11

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – A robot powered by a ground-based laser beam climbed a long cable dangling from a helicopter on Wednesday to qualify for prize money in a $2 million competition to test the potential reality of the science fiction concept of space elevators. The highly technical contest brought teams from Missouri, Alaska and Seattle to Rogers Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert, most familiar to the public as a space shuttle landing site. The contest requires their machines to climb 2,953 feet (nearly 1 kilometer) up a cable slung beneath a helicopter hovering nearly a mile high. LaserMotive's vehicle zipped up to the top in just over four minutes and immediately repeated the feat, qualifying for at least a $900,000 second-place prize. The device, a square of photo voltaic panels about 2 feet by 2 feet and topped by a motor structure and thin triangle frame, had failed to respond to the laser three times before it was lowered, inspected and then hoisted back up by the helicopter for the successful tries. LaserMotive's two principals, Jordin Kare and Thomas Nugent, said they were relieved after two years of work. They said their real goal is to develop a business based on the idea of beaming power, not the futuristic idea of accessing space via an elevator climbing a cable. "We both are pretty skeptical of its near-term prospects," Kare said of an elevator. The contest, however, demonstrates that beaming power works, Nugent said. "Anybody who needs power in one place and can't run wires to it -- we'd be able to deliver power," Kare said. Earlier out on the lakebed, team member Nick Burrows had pointed out how it grips the cable with modified skateboard wheels and the laser is aimed with an X Box game controller. It had never climbed higher than 80 feet previously, he said. The day's competition began late after hours of testing the cable system, refueling the helicopter and waits for specific time windows in which the lasers can be fired without harming satellites passing overhead. The Kansas City Space Pirates went first with a machine that initially balked but eventually began climbing. Its speed was too slow to qualify for any prizes but it got within about 160 feet of the top before the laser had to be shut down for satellite protection. Ben Shelef, CEO of the contest-sponsoring Spaceward Foundation, said the Pirates had a minor laser tracking problem but the real problem appeared to be in the mechanical system. As the afternoon grew late, the University of Saskatchewan's Space Design Team had to put off its attempts until Thursday. All three teams had further chances to qualify through Friday. The competition was five years in the making, Shelef said. "A lot of hurdles to cross," he said. "Now that it's happening I'm actually happy already. It doesn't matter what the outcome is." Funded by a NASA program to explore bold technology, the contest is intended to encourage development of a theory that originated in the 1960s and was popularized by Arthur C. Clarke's 1979 novel "The Fountains of Paradise."

Space elevators are envisioned as a way to reach space without the risk and expense of rockets.

Instead, electrically powered vehicles would run up and down a cable anchored to a ground structure and extending thousands of miles up to a mass in geosynchronous orbit -- the kind of orbit communications satellites are placed in to stay over a fixed spot on the Earth.

Electricity would be supplied through a concept known as "power beaming," ground-based lasers pointing up to photo voltaic cells on the bottom of the climbing vehicle -- something like an upside-down solar power system.

The space elevator competition has not produced a winner in its previous three years, but has become increasingly difficult.

The vehicles must climb at an average speed of 16.4 feet (5 meters) per second, or about 11 miles (18 kilometers) per hour, to qualify for the top prize. A lesser prize is available for vehicles that climb at 2 meters per second.

The rules allow one team to collect all $2 million or for sums to be shared among all three teams depending on their achievements.

While the concept of an elevator to space may seem too fanciful, Andrew Williams, 26, a mechanical engineer on the Saskatchewan team, said he has no doubts it will come about.

"Once we put our minds to something it's just a matter of time for us to achieve it," he said.

Once you have government running health care you get stuff like this.

2009-11-05T14:10:08-06:00

Once you have government running health care you get stuff like this.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1109/prayer_coverage.php3

Our current health care system is not perfect, but the proposed "cure" seems much worse than the disease.

Ray A. Rayburn - AES Fellow

And of course this was inevitable too. You'd be amazed at what has to be covered in national health care insurance policies. I expect to see snake oil in there if a snake oil company opens a factory in a powerful Member's district. Why not? And it probably will be adulterated and end up importing the oil from China where they'll sneak in lizard oil to save money...

Well, now it's official!

2009-11-05T14:10:07-06:00

Well, now it's official!

Religion and "global warming"

http://www.dailytech.com/Global+Warming+
Afforded+Same+Legal+Status+as+
Religion+in+UK/article16721.htm

Rob

It had to happen...

Molecular spray for real!!? Implications for space travel.

2009-11-05T14:10:06-06:00

Molecular spray for real!!? Implications for space travel.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/
id/33626447/ns/technology_and_science-space/

Like the nano-lathing in Total Annihilation... Wow.

Discussion of Special Relativity

2009-11-06T14:30:02-06:00

On Special Relativity

Your cocktail party theory on ether

Dear Jerry,

Linking Dark Matter/Dark Energy and ether is not so far fetched at all: http://www.space.com/
scienceastronomy/080211-
mm-dark-unification.html and http://www.eurekalert.org/
pub_releases/2006-08/ns-ert082306.php.

I would define a wave as "a cyclic changing of state over distance". I guess the key question is "change of state of what?" Michelson and Morley removed the "what". It seems to be returning. This also seems to suggest that gravity can be manipulated so maybe gravity drives are not as farfetched as before.

Taking honours physics at McGill I got to look at Michelson's notebooks; this was an elegant experiment and his notes were beautifully written. It isn't that they did an experiment badly, more that we need to figure out why they got the result they did if there is an ether.

Best, Michael

If there is an ether that is affected by gravity, then it will be entangled and one would not expect the Michelson Morley experiment to find an ether wind caused by the Earth's movement through the ether -- least not until one got a long way from the Earth, to, say, the L5 Point or beyond.

GPS needs quasars

GPS will only work if the Earth's position is known so precisely that only quasars plus other recent high tech will do the job.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33605919/
ns/technology_and_science-space/

GPS orbiters and relativity

I asked a physicist I know about this. His answer:

"The errors caused by Special Relativity are on the order of a half of a nanosecond per second, which is about a half of a foot in distance. If you didn't account for special relativity in the time of one orbit there would be an error of many feet. BUT the clocks know about special relativity and correct their time signals so that they "look right" in the coordinate frame of the surface of the earth. The fact that the correction works is actually an indication that special relativity is correct."

I have heard that also; I have also heard it questioned. I am not qualified to choose between those who say there's an anomaly and those who say this is a proof: I know people who are so qualified who will argue either way. As I said, it's a cocktail party discussion.

Dark Matter and the Size of the Universe

Jerry,

I would like to pose a three questions concerning Dark Matter.

Is the deficit in the observed matter in the Universe based on the perceived size of the Universe?

What if the perceived size of the Universe is larger than the actual size? (The "straight line" distance between two objects in the universe is less that the distance that the light from these objects must travel.)

If these are true do we need to postulate dark matter to make up the perceived deficit?

Bob Holmes

The perceived size of the universe changes like dreams. I have no idea. Special Relativity is counter intuitive-- even Einstein said that and sometimes he seems to have had some doubts -- but that hardly means it is not true. The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, but...

As a general comment on the whole thing, let me say I have no dog in this hunt. I do find Beckmann's challenges to special relativity, particularly what I think is an anomaly of the aberration of spectral binaries, somewhat intriguing, but it's no more than that. I do not believe that the United States has billions of dollars riding on the question -- unlike the consensus view of Global Warming. Special and General Relativity fermented great activity in the scientific world; a finding that the theories don't explain all the data would probably do the same, and that would be a benefit. Of course admission of that would make obsolete a lot of what we think we know, but that is the way of science...

And see below

We have mail on many subjects including some general thoughts on philosophy...

2009-11-05T14:10:02-06:00

We have mail on many subjects including some general thoughts on philosophy of science. (I once studied that under Gustav Bergmann many long years ago, but that's another subject.)

Afghanistan:

2009-11-05T14:10:01-06:00

Afghanistan:

What is victory? If we define victory as a stable liberal democracy in Afghanistan with a government centralized in Kabul, then we can see the requirements: a very long term commitment, twenty years at the least with a large Army of special forces devoted to community organizing and development; better schools in rural Afghanistan than we have in the District of Columbia; health care clinics; and enough soldiers to protect those who become our friends from those who keep the Afghan tradition of distrust of Kabul and hatred of armed foreigners on their soil. That's a lot of soldiers.

If we are not prepared to make that commitment, what should we do?

If we cannot achieve victory, what can we achieve? And what is it that we want? If it were up to me, if I were trying an experiment in nation building, it would be in a nation that has something we want; Afghanistan has nothing we want exported to the United States.

As to what we can achieve, I suggest that we think in terms of silver bullets. If we pay the President of Afghanistan (AKA the Mayor of Kabul) enough he can bribe the war lords and tribal chiefs to exclude the enemies of the United States from their regions. We can pay well. Meanwhile we run an open market for opium. We'll buy all you can make, and pay good prices for it. It's up to you to get the stuff to us and avoid being killed by the Taliban who will forbid you to sell to us. The whole program will cost less in blood and treasure than the war, and the poppy market will give the farmers something they can grow for cash. We save that part of the cost of the War on Drugs that goes to intercepting heroin made from Afghan poppies.

From the Club for Growth on the upstate New York Congressional election:

2009-11-05T13:20:01-06:00

From the Club for Growth on the upstate New York Congressional election:

Party labels aside, conservatives lost nothing last night, as Scozzafava and Owens are both avowed liberals in support of Nancy Pelosi's agenda in the House of Representatives. Doug Hoffman was our only chance to bring real change to Washington, and in little more than a month, we almost helped him pull it off.

Recall that the reason the seat was vacant is that McHugh (formerly the Republican incumbent in that seat) accepted a position in the Obama administration. Winning the seat would have been encouraging, but the loss is not critical to conservative principles. The lesson to Republican Party officials is that the country remains center/right. When Clinton pronounced that the era of Big Government was over, a majority of the nation cheered. When Gingrich left Congress and the Republicans pulled the stake out of Big Government's heart and resurrected it, they lost support. Obama did not campaign as far left of Bill Clinton. He governs left but he didn't run from the left. He'll have to consider his options now.

For those who favor limited government and federalism the news from yesterday was good, perhaps not bracing, but certainly not depressing.

Coming up: another assessment of Afghanistan. What would we consider a victory in Afghanistan? Is that achievable? If so, is it achievable at a cost we are willing to pay? If not, and we must abandon Victory, then what must we do now?

Wednesday Mail Roundup 9

2009-11-04T15:40:12-06:00

SNAFU: Situation Normal, Act F***ing Incomprehensible

2009-11-04T15:40:11-06:00

SNAFU: Situation Normal, Act F***ing Incomprehensible

"There are sources, and despite your disdain I note that Limbaugh actually read portions of the proposed health care bill. Incomprehensible, of course, but that's not his fault."

I vaguely remember from long long ago... as the saying is. watching Johnny Carson one April 15th. He brought on a man, with a short and intentionally misleading introduction, to 'discuss and read' the Internal Revenue Code.

The man, dressed in somber black, stood behind a lectern, which held a thick tome, and read in unctuous and solemn tones, as if delivering a funeral oration (I paraphrase here only a little..:)

"The amount by which the amount by which the amount determined pursuant to article 6 of subparagraph 12 less the amount determined pursuant to article 7 of subparagraph exceeds the amount determined pursuant to article....."

The roar of the crowd made hearing any more, impossible.

Incomprehensible, of course, but that's not his fault.....

Geoff

Hi Jerry:

2009-11-04T15:40:10-06:00

Hi Jerry:

Don't know if you've seen this article about the USN's newest trimaran:

http://www.informationdissemination.net
/2009/10/these-are-very-fast-ships.html

Very interesting military strategic site too, for that matter.

JR in WV

Re: eBook on Airplane

2009-11-04T15:40:09-06:00

Re: eBook on Airplane

The problem isn't that these devices generate interference. The problem is that the FAA doesn't _know_ that they _don't_. And, in a government risk-assessment bureaucrat's mind, "don't know it doesn't" is a synonym for "does".

"Well, why don't they just test the device?" you ask. You ask this because you don't think like a government risk-assessment bureaucrat. These people consider an iPod and an iPod second-generation and an iPod third-generation and an iPhone and an iPod Touch and an iPod Touch second-generation and an iPod Nano and an iPod Nano second-generation and a Shuffle and a Shuffle 2G and an iPhone 3G and blah blah BLAH...anyway, every electronic device is a completely unique item which must be put through the full range of tests, in all possible operating configurations, before it can be certified as okay. If I swap the hard drive in my notebook PC, then it's no longer a certified device and I have to re-test it before the government risk-assessment bureaucrat will allow it to be used on an airplane.

-- Mike T. Powers

electronics use on airplanes

Jerry,

You can't call this security theater, but it is still theater. Aircraft comm is in the 108-135 MHZ band and is AM. Most cell phones today are very low power and operate in the 1800MHZ range. The chances of a cell phone interfering with TSO'ed Part 121 aircraft avionics is about 0. The only thing even close is DME in the 900MHZ band, but it's not the same type of modulation. The cell phones are running inside a big aluminum tube with windows, the Aircraft comm is running through blade antennas on the body. Not much competition. If every single passenger on the plane made a worst case connection with a cell tower, the RFI would still be minimal.

Another urban legend.

Phil

Article: The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate

2009-11-04T15:40:08-06:00

Article: The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate

Dear Jerry,

A couple of (non-crackpot) scientists have posited that the products of the Large Hadron Collider are sabotaging it from the future:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/
13/science/space/13lhc.html?_r=2

I don’t know if I buy it, but it would make a fine plot device.

Jeff Stoner Centreville, Virginia

As I said when it came out, I am not sure that one gets up to being a cocktail party theory...

Colonel Couvillon on UAV's

2009-11-06T14:30:01-06:00

Colonel Couvillon on UAV's

: Pilots & UAVs

Na, nah, na, nah, nyah... Told you so!

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmoral/articles/20091102.aspx

earlier: http://pournelle.org/cgi-bin/perlfect/
search/search.pl?q=ssx&showurl=/
mail/2008/Q3/mail530.html

http://www.pournelle.com/cgi-bin/
perlfect/search/search.pl?q=
usaf&showurl=/mail/2009/Q1/
mail558.html

and, http://www.pournelle.com/mail/
2009/Q1/mail559.html#airpower

<http://www.strategypage.com/
htmw/htmoral/articles/20091102.aspx>

David Couvillon Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Collector of Hot Sauce; Avoider of Yard Work

Solar cost hype

2009-11-04T15:40:05-06:00

Solar cost hype

Dr. Pournelle,

Your correspondent wrote " See it? That little black square in the middle of Saudi Arabia? It's 231 kilometres on a side, covering some fifty-three thousand square kilometres."

Please check me on this, or throw my calculations on the mercy of your other readers. Just playing around, I'm finding a quote for solar panels at about $190 U.S. per square meter in bulk. With thumbs and a calculator, I'm getting that cells alone would cost about $10 trillion. You might be able to beat that unit cost. Generously only doubling my number for the cost of rest (e.g. structure and power controller), costs for that one plant is $20 trillion. I'm sure someone in Saudi has that.

The energy efficiency rating quoted to get the 53k^2 number is an ideal based on clear-day noon output in a factory new panel. Ignoring transport losses, transmission infrastructure, and without a ready means of storage, you'd need a plant that size at about every other time zone -- a dozen or so around the equator -- to get a constant power delivery @ $20 T. While we're at it, also ignore the political cooperation you'd need to share all that power with all the nimby countries who aren't on the equator and hosting the plants -- or even the agreements you'd need for day-side countries to share with night-side countries.

Cells degrade over time. In about 20 years (about the time you finish building the first set), you'd need to replace about 30% of your capacity, just to break even. Also, as your neighbor Ed Begley demonstrates on television, cells don't produce well when covered with dust -- they need cleaning. Maybe Saudia Arabia isn't the best site after all, but regardless, someone is going to have to sweep your initially 650 ish thousand square kilometers of cell power plants. When they get done, they can start on that extra 195k square klicks you'll need to add every couple decades. Think on the scale of cleaning Texas, then going on and getting Arkansas while you're at it (it'd take 20-30 years, trust me: in bad winters we can't even get ice off our roads in a week). That's job security you can believe in. It'll work so long as we don't need sovereignty or greater capacity, and while the weather holds out.

Personally, I prefer your approach of avoiding weather, night-time production, transport issues, the nimby international politics, and some of the maintenance by setting the plants in orbit on a national basis. However, I think nuclear plants are still the better choice, one for which the technology exists now, and I think your nuclear power estimates were lower than the real setup cost of solar. Another correspondent mentioned limited uranium reserves, but didn't mention plutonium or thorium based power generation. We've got a load of the former material just sitting around waiting to go back into bomb casings.

-d

I am not on record as believing in any kind of large centralized solar plants. I do think they can be very useful as distributed power generators. Depends on time and place.

Nuclear Costs

2009-11-04T15:40:04-06:00

Nuclear Costs

"Westinghouse claims its Advanced PWR reactor, the AP1000, will cost USD $1500-$1800 per KW for the first reactor and may fall to USD $1200 per KW for subsequent reactors. They also claim these will be ready for electricity production 3 years after first pouring concrete. " http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2323

Part of a rather good article on the whole subject.

If nuclear at $6-8bn a reactor is "competitive against other technologies" imagine it at $1.2bn. Probably even undercut China's cheap coal based energy on which their booming economy has been built. The rest of the cost is regulatory. I think government regulation overall destroys about 50% of the potential economy

Neil Craig

I think there is no consensus on the actual costs of reactors, but I am pretty sure there is agreement that a good half of it has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with the Trial Lawyers Association: France doesn't pay what we do. It's the legal eagles who profit.

I would still put the cost of a 1000 MW reactor at no more than 4 billion for the first one, and if you build 100 the last one will be less than $1 billion. I can defend that with numbers, but it seems intuitive as well.

H Beam Piper Memorial scheduled 7 November

2009-11-04T15:40:06-06:00

An Announcement from the former Senior Editor at Chaos Manor

H. Beam Piper Memorial

Hi Jerry,

Just thought I'd let you know that the new H. Beam Piper Memorial Stone will be unveiled on Saturday, November 7th, 2009, at Fairview Cemetery in Altoona, Pennsylvania at 3:00 p.m. I welcome you, as well as all of your readers and subscribers who are fans of H. Beam Piper, to attend.

This has been a three-year effort and I'd like to thank all of you who contributed to the Memorial Fund and welcome you to the Memorial unveiling. Thanks to the generosity of almost a hundred fans we were able to raise over $5,000 toward the Memorial stone. I went to Fairview Cemetery last week to oversee the stone setting. All I can say is this monument is gorgeous -- even more than even I had hoped for.

Finally, a fitting tribute to H. Beam Piper, the man who has brought us all so much reading pleasure and provided so many stimulating ideas and new worlds. For those of you who are in the State College area, Dennis Frank and I will be meeting at the Waffle Shop on Atherton at 10:00 am on the 7th. We encourage you to join us there. (Contact me via e-mail for details.) From there we will caravan to Altoona for the Piper Memorial unveiling.

For more information on the Memorial and H. Beam Piper visit: http://h-beampiper.com/

Your friend,

John Carr

Nuclear power costs

2009-11-04T15:40:01-06:00

immediate opening for an individual familiar with the Infor Global Systems "Information Expert" application

2009-11-04T14:30:14-06:00

JOB NOTICE

(I don't post job offers very often, but this one comes from someone I can hardly refuse)

(START OF POST)

Please feel free to forward this to anyone who might be interested.

We have an immediate opening for an individual familiar with the Infor Global Systems "Information Expert" application. This is a full-time contract position, in the Los Angeles area, duration 1-2 years. The Infor Financial Systems were originally developed by Management Science America (MSA) and have gone through a number of acquisitions/name changes including: Dun and Bradstreet and GEAC. Duties will include:

* Maintain and support Infor Financial System. * Maintain and support IE (Information Expert, not Internet Explorer) programs. * Maintain and support COBOL programs. * Develop documentation as appropriate.

Sincerely, Alexander Pournelle, acp at t-k.com Director, Network and Desktop Systems Practice, Tech/Knowledge, Inc. www.t-k.com <http://www.t-k.com/>

(END OF POST)

A speculation about ether relativity, and dark matter.

2009-11-04T18:10:01-06:00

A speculation on relativity:

The major evidence for the special theory of relativity is the Michaelson-Morely experiment, which demonstrated that there was no "ether wind" due to the movement of the earth through it. (For a thorough discussion of the experiment including the precise results, not just the conclusions, see Tom Bethel, Questioning Einstein, which presents the alternative theory of Dr. Petr Beckmann; note that this questions special, not necessarily general, relativity which is another matter. The book also looks at data that may not be consistent with special relativity (aberration in spectroscopic binaries, synchronized clocks in the GPS system, gaining and losing time when sending clocks around the Earth).

Einstein's special theory dismisses ether as not required to explain the known data. That leaves us with the oddity that light is a wave but there is no medium it waves in. Petr Beckmann postulated there is an ether, but it is the gravitational field, which means it is entangled with the earth; there are implications for the Michaelson-Morely experiment. Clearly an entangled gravitation field has diminishing influence as you get farther from Earth and into more dense fields such as the solar gravitational field -- and beyond that one to interstellar space.

My speculation: we are beginning to postulate both dark energy and dark matter to explain gravitational anomalies: there just isn't enough matter in the universe to explain what we see.

Could dark matter be the "ether"? In which case it would certainly react to gravitational fields, and in effect do what Beckmann's theory predicts. It would also provide a medium in which light can wave. I haven't the mathematical acuity to work out the details of this, and I suspect it's obviously wrong, but it was a thought I had while on my walk yesterday morning. I still don't understand waves without something to wave in, and I've heard most of the explanations. A sound wave can be described as a series of rarefactions and compressions in air, and it's easy to understand. Waves through an ether are a bit more complex (there's the polarization phenomena) but again they're comprehensible. Waves in an utter void are a bit tougher to visualize, which is one reason why the corpuscular theory of light hung on for so long. In any event, I think that "dark matter" as "ether" would behave about the same as Petr Beckmann's ether as the local gravitational field since the dark matter would be as entangled as the gravity field. It would eliminate "spooky action at a distance", and for that matter would explain gravity waves...

I put this as a "cocktail party" theory, one I will defend casually but I can't claim to have investigated with any thoroughness. Another of my cocktail party theories is that dogs were critical to human evolution: they used their forebrains to develop a sense of smell, we used that part to get smart; the symbiosis meant that villages with dogs had more surviving children, etc., etc. As I said, a cocktail party theory but one I've had for many years and I haven't seen any actual refutation. Of course that implies an ethical obligation: long ago our ancestors made a deal with dogs whereby we looked after each other's offspring. Leave that: the interesting theory just now is "Dark Matter is Ether."

pdf files

2009-11-04T14:30:04-06:00

High tax/High service California vs. low tax/low service

2009-11-04T14:30:08-06:00

Click here: The Big-Spending, High-Taxing, Lousy-Services Paradigm by William Voegeli, City Journal Autumn 2009 <http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_california.html>

May interest you. Compares Texas & California on big government/little government terms

Neil Craig

A good article, if lengthy. Compares Texas which promises low taxes and a lower grade of public services with California which promises high grade public service and corresponding taxes: the problem being that California has the taxes but the public services are for the benefit of the public employees, not the middle class and the taxpayers. The consequence is the continued wreck in California.

Nuclear power

2009-11-04T14:30:07-06:00

One estimate is that 500 nuclear power plants would make America energy independent. I think that is optimistic in that an abundance of electricity doesn't mean we won't need to import oil for transportation needs, but it would certainly take us a long way toward independence. The cost would be in the order of 2 billion per plant (I would think less; that is the first one might be 4 billion, but the 400th would be considerably less than a billion; but call it 2 billion). That is one trillion dollars, comparable to the TARP or stimulus -- and for once a deficit would be financing something real.

It is less than the cost of the war, and less than the war is going to cost if we continue. Cheap reliable energy would be one major step toward economic recovery. Low cost energy plus freedom will bring prosperity. If we have the energy we can work on the freedom. The whole thing could be accomplished in four years. Of course the ravening wolves in the Congress won't do it -- but then it's not likely that this is the kind of hope and change we can believe in from the current White House.

But it would work. France knows the value of nuclear power. Why can't we learn it?

Yesterday's by-election was encouraging. New Jersey...

2009-11-04T18:10:02-06:00

Yesterday's by-election was encouraging. New Jersey, as blue a state as you can get, now has a Republican governor. In Virginia the Republicans had a landslide. In upstate New York the country club republicans and rinos got an interesting message. Across the country the results have been encouraging, to the point that the Senate Democrats are now talking about further delays in the Health Care Bill That Was Demanded Before September.

If you are concerned about the rush to nationalize health care and carbon use, yesterday was a good day. Not as good as it might have been, but a good day. We'll take what we can get in this year of grace...

Tuesday View Roundup 4

2009-11-03T19:10:02-06:00

How eInk works.

2009-11-03T18:40:16-06:00

Subject: How eInk works.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/
2009/11/01/e_ink_technology/

Tracy Walters, CISSP

Follow $

2009-11-03T18:40:15-06:00

Follow $

Jerry,

Even the New York Times can eventually figure out to follow the money:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/
business/energy-environment/03gore.html

<snip>

Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.

Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, asserted at a hearing this year <http://energycommerce.house.gov/
Press_111/20090424/transcript_20090424_ee.pdf> that Mr. Gore stood to benefit personally from the energy and climate policies he was urging Congress to adopt.

Mr. Gore says that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is.<snip>

Chronically ill people 'happier if they abandon hope', say docs

2009-11-03T18:40:14-06:00

Chronically ill people 'happier if they abandon hope', say docs

Jerry,

My ‘Conspiracy Theory’ antenna just started spinning…what if the ‘researchers’ are getting us ready for ObamaCare and the Last Year of Life syndrome.

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/
2009/11/02/best_just_give_up/

Chronically ill people 'happier if they abandon hope', say docs

Promises to 'reconnect bowels' make people sad

By Lewis Page

Posted in Biology, 2nd November 2009 12:26 GMT

Health researchers in America have suggested that it is better for people suffering from severe illness to give up any hope that their condition might improve.

“Hope is an important part of happiness,” said Dr Peter A Ubel, one of the authors of the "happily hopeless" study, “but there’s a dark side of hope".

Essentially, according to Ubel and his colleagues, it's often better to just resign yourself to how awful things are rather than raging against your situation and hoping desperately that it will get better.

The doctors based this on surveys of patients who had their colons removed. Some were told that was it, they were on colostomy bags for life; others were informed that doctors would "reconnect their bowels" at some future date. Apparently the first group reported higher levels of happiness over the next six months.

“We think they were happier because they got on with their lives. They realized the cards they were dealt, and recognized that they had no choice but to play with those cards,” says Ubel, who was teamed up with social scientist George Loewenstein on the study.

The better-living-through-bad-news profs say that the same psychology is seen in other situations. It's better, they argue, to have your spouse die than to have them divorce you.

“If your husband or wife dies, you have closure. There aren’t any lingering possibilities," says Loewenstein.

The very worst thing a doctor can do, according to the profs, is to sugar-coat any medical bad news, or to rashly lay any stress on chances of survival or recovery.

“Hopeful messages may not be in the best interests of the patient and may interfere with the patient’s emotional adaptation,” says Ubel. “I don’t think we should take hope away. But I think we have to be careful about building up people’s hope so much that they put off living their lives."

There's more from Michigan Uni here http://www2.med.umich.edu/prmc/
media/newsroom/details.cfm?ID=1359 . �

Tracy Walters, CISSP

Social science, voodoo science...

So do the grouches of the world still need to apologize? -

Not Earth shattering, but I was amused by this.

http://www.reuters.com/article/
lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE5A10ZP20091102

R, Rose

Dell chief stuffs data center into suitcase

2009-11-03T18:40:13-06:00

Dell chief stuffs data center into suitcase

It occurs to me that a market exists for this…either develop and sell boxes to clients that could be prepositioned in a disaster situation…they could literally put them anywhere they had power and access to communication lines….they could even be updated to keep current along with the in place systems.

…or build boxes ready to ship and contract with a customer for a monthly fee guaranteeing the system to be onsite within 24 hours and operational within 48 hours of a disaster call. You could shelve several of these at a central hub (like UPS or Fedex), keep them current with updates from a software and hardware perspective, depending on the customer need and willingness to pay the fee.

Could be a paradigm for a new business opportunity if someone were willing to take it on.

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/27/data_center_in_a_briefcase/

Tracy

eBooks and reading more

2009-11-03T18:40:12-06:00

Subject: eBooks and reading more

Jerry,

Re: the conversation on eBooks, and the idea that people are reading more because of them. I am an avid reader…I have been since discovering Tom Swift and the Hardy Boys in 4th grade…umm…let’s just say it was sometime in the middle of the last century. I’m now on my fourth eBook now having gone through an eBook Reader, a Sony Reader, and my second Kindle.

I would propose that Amazon’s assumption that electronic book reading people are reading more is probably flawed. I am reading more books from Amazon, simply because they are easier to get on the Kindle and I can start reading right away, which Amazon would view as increased business from me. It’s also making me branch out a bit more, because the book I want is not always available on the Kindle, so I’ll look around a bit for new material. The point is, I’m in a regular bookstore much less than I used to be, I may make a monthly trip now as opposed to weekly trips before, so I’m buying far fewer books from Barnes & Noble or Borders.

I do read a lot as I spend a lot of time on airplanes and I don’t like working during those periods. Speaking of which…I really wish the airlines would address eBooks and let us read them for the first and last 10 minutes of the flight…it’s annoying to have to turn it off during taxi, takeoff and reaching 10,000 feet…I don’t believe the eBook generates enough power to interfere with the flight instruments (obviously the Kindle and other books can’t be in wireless mode during any part of the flight). I also read every night before bed and often when I have a few minutes during the day. My Kindle goes everywhere with me…in the car, on the airplane, on my Harley, and I find it much easier to load the Kindle with a dozen books before I go overseas than to carry that many with me.

I’d probably read just as much or nearly as much if I didn’t have a eBook reader, although it does make it more convenient to catch a few minutes with my nose in the book, and perhaps the time I would have spent driving to and from the bookstore is spent in other ways, including reading.

I also wish the Kindle did a better job of formatting Adobe documents ….I wouldn’t mind sending some Adobe documents from work to the Kindle so I could review them at various times…even share them with others wirelessly.

Certainly eBooks are changing the landscape for many of us….and not just early adopters of technology.

Tracy Walters, CISSP

I don't think an ebook generates enough anything to harm an airplane but the simple thing to do is turn off the wireless part of it. And I agree about Kindle formatting of pdf. But over time things are happening...

: Solar Power

2009-11-03T18:40:09-06:00

: Solar Power

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_o30sCBMjTtk/SusH3gTRjuI/AAAAAAAAAWE/UDg1nj-_VWc/s320/solar+power+area+on+globe.png

See it? That little black square in the middle of Saudi Arabia? It's 231 kilometres on a side, covering some fifty-three thousand square kilometres. That's the total area of solar panels needed to supply global electricity needs at its current rate of consumption, some 2 trillion Watts. Calculated by Professor Raymond Pierrehumbert of Chicago University, in an open letter <http://bit.ly/3Pdk0i> that corrects global-warming denying innumeracy in Superfreakonomics.

http://unlikelyworlds.blogspot.com/2009/10/solar-power-footprint.html

Hidden Solar Cells: 3-D System Based On Optical Fiber Could Provide New Options For Photovoltaics

"Using this technology, we can make photovoltaic generators that are foldable, concealed and mobile," said Zhong Lin Wang, a Regents professor in the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/
releases/2009/11/091102172517.htm

Bill Shields

The chief problem with solar power is the expense of storage; and of course it is irregular and not entirely reliable...

SCRIBD

2009-11-03T18:40:11-06:00

News on Scribd

Dr. Pournelle,

I saw this on a litigation news reporter I subscribe to and thought you might have some interest. Mssg below:

Andrews Telecommunications Industry Litigation Reporter October 28, 2009

Online

PUBLISHING SITE COMMITTED MASSIVE COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS, CLASS ACTION SAYS

Scott v. Scribd Inc.

In addition to wholesale, direct infringement, a filtering system used by online publishing and document repository Web site Scribd itself infringes the copyrights of authors whose works it purports to protect, according to a putative class-action lawsuit.

Scott v. Scribd Inc., No. 09-CV-03039, complaint filed (S.D. Tex., Houston Div. Sept. 18, 2009).

Author Elaine Scott filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, seeking to lead a class of all authors whose copyrights Scribd has infringed.

Scott describes herself as a successful children's book author. In a strongly worded complaint, she accuses the defendant of being an “egregious infringer” that has “broken barriers to copyright infringement on a global scale” and “shamelessly profits from the stolen copyrighted works of innumerable authors.”

Scott also takes issue with Scribd's system for dealing with copyright infringement. When the company receives a notice of infringement from a copyright holder, it removes the work in question and archives it in a filtering system to keep it from being uploaded again. Under the guise of helping authors, this practice still constitutes infringement and benefits Scribd, the complaint alleges.

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. � 512, operators of Web sites are not normally liable for damages stemming from any information posted to them. However, Scribd is not entitled to such protection, Scott says, because it directly profits from copyright infringement.

Further, the company allegedly fails to maintain a designated agent to receive notices of infringement.

The complaint alleges copyright infringement.

Scott seeks a declaration that Scribd is not protected by the DMCA's “safe harbor” provisions. She also seeks damages, costs, injunctive relief and attorney fees.

According to the complaint, Scott will seek a ruling on her DMCA declaration on an “expedited basis.”

She is represented by K.A.D. Camara of Camara & Sibley in Houston, TX. Company: Scribd Inc.

Smart grid

2009-11-03T18:40:10-06:00

Smart Grid

I've worked for several of the largest utilities in the country, so this is first hand knowledge.

The utility companies are pretty well stuck. They've been vilified by the current administration only slightly less than insurance companies. As regulated utilities, they have a moral and ethical duty to provide safe, reliable, inexpensive power to their consumers, yet they've been hijacked by the green movement. In many places, rather than building clean-coal plants for example, which are the cheapest generation capacity currently available, they are building wind and solar facilities with are the most expensive. More important, these new technologies are unreliable, and can only be used for peak power demands, rather than base-load generation. Power storage technology simply isn't advanced enough to address the situation on a large scale, and across every climate in the country. Even if we had additional generation capacity, we don't have the transmission capacity to move the power to population centers.

As demand increases, we are headed for widespread brown and blackouts, and the utilities know it. The lead time on new plants can be up to 25 years, and transmission lines can be 10 years. For some, Smart Grid is a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable for a few more years by reducing power consumption, since they can't build cost- effective new base load generation capacity (coal, gas, hydro, nuclear), for others, it's simply a means to advance a green agenda and control our standard of living, and for the rest, a way to boost profits and defer costs.

What they call Smart Grid has been wrapped up in nice pretty packaging, but from the consumer standpoint it involves installing a meter that has two-way transmission capability. This will allow them to do several things, beginning with automated meter reading, and moving on to variable rates, which means charging different rates at different times of the day. Later, it could allow them to ration power, create rolling brown/blackouts on a property by property basis, and expand the use of 'saver switches' on a mandatory basis to turn off certain appliances (e.g. dryers and air conditioners) whenever the utility company (or in theory, the hacker) wants. I have yet to have anyone explain to me how letting the utilities (and government) monitor and manage my power usage benefits me. It doesn't.

Now there are modifications to the electric grid itself, but those are somewhat different. Until recently, the grid was managed using a protocol called SCADA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA , which is not accessible outside the SCADA network. That software has been written and tested over many many years, and works very well. Currently there are modifications underway to transition that network over to TCP/IP. It's not so much that there is new software, as that there's a new protocol.

Of course there will be firewalls, and private networks and other mechanisms to prevent remote access, but we all know that those aren't perfect. So essentially, we're moving from a network that is non- routable to the Internet, to one that is routable to the Internet. I'm not so much worried about solar flares bringing down the grid (which can still happen), rather somewhat concerned about hackers doing so. It's probably not a huge risk, but it is definitely non- zero.

In this case, the primary motivator behind the transition is money. SCADA requires the construction of dedicated network lines to each facility to be controlled, which are expensive. It requires knowledge of an increasingly arcane technology, and specialized, low-volume hardware components. By moving to TCP/IP they can leverage existing network links, reuse existing hardware and software, and reduce costs. Not a bad motivator, but security and reliability have somewhat taken a back seat.

So the net is, that Smart Grid doesn't do much for the consumer at all. For people that are retired, spend most of the time at home (or work there), it will likely result in significantly increased utility bills for those who need to use air conditioning, or like to do laundry during the day. I see zero benefit for the consumer in the long run, and many paths to future crises.

Dr. Pournelle,

I see a different reason for the smart grid. One that doesn't even require the grid to be reliable.

One of the favorite methods of determining unpaid taxes in the underground economy is to divide economic activity by power usage. When there is much power used that doesn't get reported on taxes, one has found an excellent place to audit. An example is growing marijuana under electric lights. Another is working a factory off the books. Alternative energy threatens to take this method away from the taxman.

I believe the smart grid is simply intended to preserve this method of social control and to extend it. Currently this method only extends to areas and groups. It is a back-office method that, however useful, does not cover individuals. With the smart grid power use may be admissible in court. Also, it is paid for by the consumer. Finally, it becomes more accurate.

For the government, what's not to love?

Yours,

David Bullis

The purpose of government is to hire and pay government workers; to this end it must collect taxes since it has no other reliable source of income...

Nuclear Power

2009-11-03T18:40:08-06:00

We have mail on nuclear power

Nuclear piece from Monday's mail on cost of new plants

Jerry, appreciate the support for nuclear in yesterday’s mail <http://jerrypournelle.com/view/2009/Q4/view595.html#Monday> .

The cost for a new nuclear plant in the US, however, is more in the range of $6-$8B per plant. Maybe one day we could get it down to $2B but not anytime soon. Even though they’re expensive to build, new nuclear plants are still competitive against other technologies because of their low operating costs. Below is a link where you can find a Nuclear Energy Institute paper titled "The Cost of New Generating Capacity in Perspective": http://www.nei.org/financialcenter/. This paper could give you a good start on finding information on the economics and finance of new nuclear power plants in the US if you’re interested.

Regards,

David Bradish

NEI

That is the cost in the present US legal environment; it is not what it would cost if we took energy independence seriously, and give it a national security priority. Simple legal changes would bring the price down by half simply by taking uncertainties out of the process. Having to have a bunch of capital committed but not working while the legal buzzards circle is one of the major costs. In France they don't cost so much. Nor in Japan.

Nuclear economy

Hi.

You said in http://jerrypournelle.com/view/2009/Q4/view595.html#Monday that

"One estimate is that 500 nuclear power plants would make America energy independent."

Keep in mind that we've got about a 100-year supply of uranium at our current rate of consumption (A) using current once-through technology and (B) at about the current price of uranium ($130/kgU -> ~0.4�/kW•h). To quintuple nuclear power, we need to expand production considerably and/or shift to breeder reactors. Fortunately, both are possible.

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html

the Integral Fast Reactor http://bravenewclimate.com/ or the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (aka Molten Salt Reactor) http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/

Or more speculatively, Bussard's polywell fusion, or Lerner's focus fusion, http://www.economist.com/
sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14698355 .

-- Bill Woods

Doc Bussard was a long time friend. There are new technologies in the technology stream, but for now we don't need them to get going. If we had turned to nuclear power on 12 September 2001 where might we be now? We would not be in Iraq and we would have gone to Afghanistan and got out again. And as we stop buying oil from the Middle East the need for involvement there would be smaller and small. Of course I was saying all this before the FIRST Gulf War.

I think most people who think about these matters KNOW these things, but apparently those who control our destiny find other interests more important. All I can do is keep trying to get the message out.

The way to make an economy boom is to have low cost energy and freedom.

Nuclear and transportation is an easy enough problem.

1) Build nuclear plants in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Michigan's Bay area--anywhere with coal and water. 2) Set up a co-generation facility where the steam from the plant and the coal extracted locally are used in Fischer–Tropsch generation of petrochemicals (including transportation fuels).

It reduces resistance to nuclear from the coal producers by both directly adding jobs in coal-producing areas and by creating a new market for coal. It serves national security/energy independence purposes by moving the source of transportation fuel to domestic resources. It cuts carbon emissions less than the Sierra Club wants, but still some when you move the energy base of the country from coal-and-oil to coal-and-nuclear. Make the nukes fast reactors with on-site waste reprocessing, and they can even eliminate the problem of long-term nuclear waste storage, since you consume all the actinides.

Is it more expensive energy than the late-1990s coal-oil base? Sure. It's also long-term stable-priced energy from domestic resources. But since you're building new infrastructure, you have to beat the NIMBYs and BANANAs and the anti-nukes to do it.

-- Steven Ehrbar

We send a trillion a year to the Near East.

Nuclear power plants

… or, politically even easier, the Administration could direct 1/4-1/3 of the outstanding unallocated stimulus funds toward building nuclear power plants, thus “creating and saving” jobs in their most-favored locations in to-be-rewarded-for-political-support states. It would get the ball rolling. And, allocating more money wouldn’t necessarily get them built any faster than could be done with this level of funding (due to limited resources and ramp-up time), nor get any more built during this administration’s reign. As you say, it would work…

Allen P

It would work.

There's a bag of interesting mail. Including on nuclear power.

2009-11-03T19:10:01-06:00

There's a bag of interesting mail. Including on nuclear power.

Subject: A visit to the first Microsoft store

http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=669&tag=nl.e019

Tracy Walters, CISSP

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009 /11/02/esther_dyson_to_sort_out_nasa/...

2009-11-03T18:40:03-06:00

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009
/11/02/esther_dyson_to_sort_out_nasa/

Esther '1st lady of internet' Dyson appointed NASA advisor

'I'm dying to get into space but can't afford it'

By Lewis Page <http://forms.theregister.co.uk/
mail_author/?story_url=/2009/11/02/
esther_dyson_to_sort_out_nasa/>

Posted in Space, 2nd November 2009 16:36 GMT

Famed techbiz journo and investor Esther Dyson has been named as chairperson of a new "Technology and Innovation Committee" formed to help advise the senior management of NASA.

The space agency has announced a "restructuring" of its Advisory Council, featuring four new committees looking into "key areas of importance to the agency's future" - namely Commercial Space, Education and Public Outreach, Information Technology Infrastructure, and Technology 'n' Innovation.

Hurrah.

Sunday Mail Roundup 1

2009-11-02T14:40:22-06:00

Saturday Mail Roundup 1

2009-11-02T14:40:21-06:00

Re: challenges to special relativity

2009-11-06T14:30:03-06:00

Re: challenges to special relativity

My physics days are long behind me, but I want to add a point not being made in most of the discussion. You can challenge special relativity in the sense that it needs refinement. You cannot challenge it that it is totally wrong. Special relativity is one of the most confirmed theories in science. Every particle accelerator is built using special relativity to calculate the momentum of subatomic particles moving close to the speed of light. Every accelerator experiment discovers the change in elementary particle lifetimes, depending on how close the particles are to the speed of light. The theory is confirmed, in detail, every time you run one of these accelerators.

I do not think that you will find a serious physicist who thinks that special relativity is _wrong_, any more than you will find one who thinks that Newtonian mechanics is wrong. It may need refinement, but it is not wrong. We will never stop teaching Newtonian mechanics in elementary school and high school, nor special relativity in college. They work.

As an example, you can discuss whether the world is round or flat (I have no idea whether intelligent people ever thought it was flat, and I remember the discussions here.) Then you can question whether the shape is a sphere; maybe it’s an oblate spheroid. But we are never going to think that it is flat. Some scientific questions get settled. Then you go on to refine them, by adding new twists.

So don’t ask about GPSs. They are going to follow special relativity’s time dilatation. It works. Any challenges will be on far weirder cases, out of the range of experimental science to date.

You mentioned global warming. Global warming is a very different issue, at a very different stage. There we are arguing over whether the science has been done right in the first place. I think that most climate scientists believe in the standard global warming theory, but there is a significant percentage that disagree on various crucial points. I don’t care if it’s 90% against 10% (and all surveys have shown that the percentage of doubters in the field is way above 10%) – that means that _there is no consensus_. They are still working on it. The science is not settled until essentially every scientist in the field sees this as being part of the basic tools he uses to do his business.

mkr

Well, as I said, I don't have a dog in this fight, and I am not going overboard on defending cocktail party theories. I do point out that no one says Special Relativity doesn't produce correct answers that standard Newtonian physics can't produce without modifications -- but according to Beckmann and a few others, so does Newtonian physics with an ether that is sensitive to local gravitational influences. The Michelson Morley experiment pretty well shows that there is no ether wind brought about by the motion of the Earth in its orbit. That means either that there is no ether -- Einstein's postulate -- or that the ether moves along with the Earth, i.e. that there is gravitational entanglement of the ether with the Earth. Beckmann's hypothesis is that the ether is the local gravitational field; there isn't any other ether. Beckmann, not a theoretical physicist but better trained in engineering physics than I am, was very careful about his assertions. He claimed, and I have seen no refutation, that his assumption that gravitational fields were in fact "the ether" explained all the experimental data without the assumption that light speed in a vacuum is invariant, or that motion of an object relative to an observer is indistinguishable from motion of the observer relative to the object: that is, if you move toward me, my clocks slow down, or at least someone observing both of us will think so.

I can hardly insist that the universe make intuitive sense, but I would prefer theories that don't unduly strain credulity. I'd also prefer a theory that doesn't automatically rule out faster than light travel. I understand thoroughly that the universe doesn't care about my preferences, but once again, given the choice of two theories one of which fits my preferences and one of which doesn't, I can hardly be faulted for raising questions about what evidence supports what theory.

Regarding GPS, special relativity flatly says there is no synchronicity of clocks moving relative to each other. Now orbital speeds are not high compared to the speed of light, but we can detect interference waves from light coming from objects moving at those speeds. It turns out that special relativity correcti0ns work with GPS but, as I understand it, you don't need that complexity, and assuming synchronicity among all those clocks is "good enough." Meaning, I presume that despite the special relativity prohibition of synchronicity of clocks moving with respect to each other, the assumption of synchronicity is good enough for navigational purposes. I don't really mean to make light of this: I merely point out that the complexities of assuming special relativity make calculations tedious, and it you can find a way to get the right answer without going through all of that, it's worth something not to have to do it. None of which is definitive.

My speculation, just to be clear, is that IF Beckmann's theory that there is an ether, and the ether is the local gravitational field, be sufficient to explain all the known data -- I don't use the word "truth" except in the Popperian sense of "not falsified" -- then I wonder if Dark Matter, which would certainly be entangled with local gravity fields, might not be the ether? And as I said, it's a cocktail party theory. I will also point out that asking questions about special relativity is probably the best way to increase understanding of a rather thoroughly counter-intuitive theory. Even Einstein seems to have had some doubts about the need for two different relativities. And I see no harm at all in asking about GPS: I know it works. I also know that special relativity says you can't synchronize those clocks. And I know that we have to assume they are synchronized in order to get the right answers. While we're on that, I can ask about clocks sent around the world, one to the east, and one to the west: they come back out of synch, and oddly enough, out of synch by the amount predicted by an ether theory. I make no doubt that special relativity can explain this but I'm not sure quite how. The clocks were sent on commercial airplanes and didn't move very fast over the surface of the earth, the rotational velocity being the critical factor.

I agree regarding Global Warming. That one is beyond cocktail party theories. And see below

Quantitative analysis reqd

2009-11-05T14:10:05-06:00

Quantitative analysis reqd

Scientific analysis requires quantitative analysis…

While we're speculating;

You said GPS clocks must be syncronized to nanoseconds. If you did the arithmetic would it turn out that the differences caused by special relativity would be less than that?

Reminds me of Newton's laws still being valid for special cases, such as use on Earth.

Not all scientific models are quantitative, and the assumption that all of nature can be described by mathematics has yet to be proved; but it is certainly the case that having a good mathematical model is best when possible. The special relativity equations are ugly and tedious but not really beyond advanced high school algebra. The tensors of general relativity, on the other hand, are beyond most people (including me) and some have as I understand it yet to be solved at all. That is one reason for interest in finding a simpler model of the universe that doesn't require tensors. Of course there may not be a simpler model; the universe doesn't always cooperate with our efforts to understand it. It's remarkable just how much of it we do understand.

The Ether, Light Waves, And Etc.

2009-11-04T15:40:03-06:00

The Ether, Light Waves, And Etc.

Jerry ---

Just read your speculation about the New Ether (heh!) being, or possibly being able to be, the dark matter that is "observed" in the universe. I like it. Whether or not it's true or not, however...

Your speculation generates a thought:

The "vacuum" has been shown (Casimir effect) to be populated by virtual particles coming into and out of existence in every square, um, inch of spacetime, at all times, with the timescales, of course, being very, very small.

That sounds to *me* like a stroboscopic version of the ether.

Just a thought...

--- Tim Kyger

Scientific Truth in my Thomistic/Popperian view is a statement that generates falsifiable hypotheses which haven't been falsified. (I will leave Eternal Truth and Revelation for another discussion). I haven't yet seen data that falsifies my hypothesis, but then I haven't looked hard at the actual professional literature. It does seem to me that there is something wrong with special relativity given some modern evidence like synchronization of the GPS clocks -- which are certainly moving relative to each other as well as relative to the transmitter that updates their time stamps, so under special relativity as I understand it they can't really be synchronized -- but GPS only works if they are synchronized to nanoseconds. That data have been known for years, but special relativity is still accepted, which may be a comment on my lack of understanding of the explanations, but it may also be a comment on consensus in science: who would fund an experimentum crucis on special relativity? Assuming there is one that everyone would accept as crucial.

Monday Mail Roundup 2

2009-11-02T14:40:17-06:00

Mother of all carry trades faces an inevitable bust,

2009-11-02T14:40:15-06:00

Mother of all carry trades faces an inevitable bust,

Jerry

Want to know why it hasn't felt like a depression? The pain has been deferred:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/
9a5b3216-c70b-11de-bb6f-00144feab49a.html

Hmm. Negative interest rates are here, for the rest of the world. Very interesting.

Critter arithmetic

The White House says the stimulus package has created or saved 640,329 jobs. I'd hate to be the 640,330th person.

Meanwhile 2.2 million jobs have been lost. In my day we would have subtracted one number from the other, giving a net loss.

But with the new math we have a gain, alongside the loss.

Doom: if despair is a sin, is Pelagianism?

2009-11-02T14:40:16-06:00

Subj: State of the US: Rome vs Byzantium or Lions vs Foxes?

Might it make more sense to understand the current state of the US using the framework of Pareto's "Circulation of the Elites", with its oscillation between Lions-dominated and Foxes-dominated states, than using the framework of unidirectional Imperial degeneration?

Did not Jefferson, for example, have in mind more a cyclical pattern for the unfolding of the then-future history of the US, with his famous "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure."?

Is Despair the only appropriate form of Pessimism for our current predicament?

Perhaps "We Are Doomed", as the title of John Derbyshire's most recent book puts it, but are we Doomed to annihilation, or merely to occasional, perhaps even periodic, less-than-annihilating catastrophes? Are we living on a live volcano, or merely on a coast that gets hit by hurricanes every few years?

Is not the expectation that we can Restore the Republic, and then bask forever after in serene Republican security and contentment, merely another form of the Pelagian doctrine of perfectibility?

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Conservatism and libertarianism are vectors, not scalars; I do not expect the restoration of the Republic, but moving in that direction is still the right idea. Being governed by national interests and not social theories still works better. Being objective about the world is still a good idea.

I agree, we are not going to restore the Old Republic; but then I never expected to. Conservatism as I see it is a set of principles and a map of some dangers and swamps to avoid; it is not an ideology, and I have never insisted on ideological purity. I would prefer a centrist nation with two parties, neither of which had any real ideological commitment to anything except to capture control of government, so that one chooses candidates on googoo -- good government -- principles. Of course that too is unlikely.

I thought the Seventy Years War was a live volcano, and I was a Cold Warrior most of my life; I had to compromise a number of conservative principles to do so. Perhaps too many. Perhaps we ought to have fought harder against domestic ideologies than against the USSR, but the USSR did pose an existential threat, and for a while communism was vcry much on the march. It wasn't efficient but if it could expand and let war feed war the eventual result was inevitable.

The US has great internal strength. And do note that life was often good in Imperial Rome; it was when the resource base failed that things got grim at home. Of course the Emperor was no longer a Roman, and his staff were no longer Romans, but surely that isn't going to happen to us? The President has to be natural born, and the Chief of Staff has to be confirmed by the Senate and above reproach?

My friend the Derb is a bit more pessimistic than I am.

More on climate

2009-11-02T14:40:14-06:00

Climate

Jerry

(1) This Youtube video from Viscount Monckton came via e-mail yesterday with the note attached:

This speech was made October 14, 2009 In Minnesota!

This has got to be disseminated quickly so that perhaps something can be done to stop this absolute madness. This is the most scary thing I have seen to date and it is going to happen very, very fast – in a matter of days. This is a relatively short video – PLEASE TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO WATCH IT.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMe5dOgbu40

(2) This page appears to be an outline of the treaty. On a quick scan (all I have time for this AM) I can neither confirm nor deny the Viscount's charges that it sets up a new world government that he expects the US to cede sovereignty to. (Conversely, the Viscount seems to know little about the ratification process; such a thing would never be ratified).

http://assets.wwf.ca/downloads/wwf_proposal_copenhagen_climatetreaty.pdf

(3) The official web site of the Copenhagen Council. http://www.copenhagenclimatecouncil.com/

Linked from the Wiki for Copenhagen Climate Council.

(4) Official web sites of the Copenhagen Climate Conference 2009

http://www.erantis.com/events/
denmark/copenhagen/climate-
conference-2009/index.htm http://en.cop15.dk/

I've got to head out, but this is crucial. Hopefully the network can pick up on more.

Jim

<http://www.erantis.com/events/
denmark/copenhagen/climate-
conference-2009/index.htm>

I doubt it is that urgent. Treaties take a long time, and the Senate isn't in a rush to hand over US sovereignty to Al Gore. We do need to get past cap and trade.

"For shame, Scientific American"

That's the final comment of Lewis Page in his discussion of SA's current cover article all about how wind, sun and water renewable energy will save us all.

Julie

http://www.theregister.co.uk/
2009/10/26/jacobson_sciam_globo_renewables_bit/

Harry Erwin's Letter from England

2009-11-02T14:40:13-06:00

Harry Erwin's Letter From England

The academic cartoonist Jorge Cham had a run-in with the UK Borders Agency when he came here to lecture and ended up being deported. Go to <http://www.phdcomics.com/> and see the series of strips beginning 10/26/2009. Cham has hispanic and oriental parents and did a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford. He then was a full-time instructor and researcher at Caltech for three years before becoming a full-time cartoonist. This is not an uncommon experience for foreign (non-EU) academics in the UK--see this THE story: <http://tinyurl.com/yhdczv8>.

The Royal Mail strike continues: <http://tinyurl.com/yg5zxn5>. The Tories are getting fed up: <http://tinyurl.com/yfgh676>.

Labour under fire as recession continues in the UK and the US returns to growth. "The UK now has a smaller economy than Italy." <http://tinyurl.com/ygnejcf > <http://tinyurl.com/yfrocot>

New UK Supreme Court questions the vetting scheme. <http://tinyurl.com/ygb86h9 >

Phorm in court: <http://tinyurl.com/yf3g3vv> <http://tinyurl.com/yhlomzt>

Nimrod problems: <http://tinyurl.com/yl86rjz>--the shortcut culture. <http://tinyurl.com/yg7m5tk >

UK helicopter problems: <http://tinyurl.com/yks53rg>

Chief drug advisor sacked: <http://tinyurl.com/ylsc4x2> <http://tinyurl.com/yetayzr > <http://tinyurl.com/yjoyuts> <http://tinyurl.com/ykzjvwb> <http://tinyurl.com/ydvrxm6 >

Harry Erwin, PhD

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." (Benjamin Franklin, 1755)

Sunday View Roundup 1

2009-11-02T14:40:09-06:00

I'm getting a late start and it's time for our walk.

2009-11-06T14:10:01-06:00

I'm getting a late start and it's time for our walk.

While I'm gone you can have a look at mail about cocktail party theories.

Newt Gingrich said last night that he had endorsed the Republican candidate...

2009-11-05T13:20:02-06:00

Newt Gingrich said last night that he had endorsed the Republican candidate in upstate New York because she was the unanimous choice of the eleven Republican County Chairmen in the District. Precisely why they endorsed someone who would later withdraw and endorse a Democrat candidate is not known to me, and I doubt that Newt knows either. His advice to local party officials in New York state (where the Conservatives get to run a candidate or can endorse a candidate of another party; that's not a common situation in most states, and makes New York state politics unique) is that the Republican Party has to pay at least some attention to the local Conservative Party people in choices like this.

My observation is that parties and movements who can't generate party workers generally don't win. The ground game -- getting out the vote on election day -- remains fairly decisive, and one key to political influence remains: become a party activist and you get some influence. It is no longer true as it was in the 1950's and much of the 1960's that the US is in effect governed by about 50,000 self-selected Party Officials. Their influence and power have been greatly diluted by fund raisers and professional campaign people .

The so-called expertise of the army of mercenary political experts can be questioned. So can their commitment to any given political philosophy. It's hard to make a living as a political consultant unless you are willing to make fairly extensive compromises; it's easy to get in the habit of making compromise a goal, not a means to an end. The pay isn't all that good between campaigns, unless like Lyn Nofziger (whom I knew fairly well and admired) you do other consulting work. Lyn even co-wrote a couple of Western novels back in the slow times of Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter before the Reagan resurgence.

The self-selected party workers still have influence over party philosophy. It's one reason why the "social conservatives" have the influence they have: the can turn out the shock troops, people who will stand in the rain at a shopping mall, drive voters to the polls, organize people in assisted living facilities to get absentee ballots and fill them out, and all the other not very colorful work that goes into the ground game. Most conservatives don't want to do that. As Russell Kirk used to say, "conservatism is enjoyment." Conservatives believe that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, but it's not a price so many of them are prepared to pay. Vigilance, yes; but sporadic, intense vigilance. Supreme effort, then "I lie in possession. Let me sleep."

The self-selected Party Workers -- of both parties -- no longer have the influence they once had, but they have some.

Meanwhile, the gloves are off, and we have seen that the Change We Can Believe In -- health care 'reform', cap and trade, enormous deficits, nationalization of industries, regulations without limit imposed by regulators who are beyond any regulation but the Iron Law -- has awakened some of the sleepers.

Tuesday's by-election has had a large influence on the future of the health care and carbon tax bills; the great shift of Independents from Obama has them scared. This must not be exaggerated. Back room politics will still have great influence, and the news media are already spinning the by-election shift to minimize it. But by and large there is reason for joy if not great rejoicing.

This has been a day of distractions. For reasons I don't fathom I couldn't...

2009-11-04T14:30:11-06:00

This has been a day of distractions. For reasons I don't fathom I couldn't install an update to Acrobat on my Windows 7 64-bit system; it kept saying I didn't have administrator capability and if I logged in as administrator it gave me the same message. Eventually I was able to download and install an update to an installer, and once that was done I was able to install the update and read the pdf file, which is an e-ticket for my trip in a couple of weeks to Tyson's Corners VA where I am to take part in a conference. So I got that printed out. Finally. And now if I click a pdf file it opens as it should. But it took longer than it should have to muck about finding a way to make it happen.

It is probably time for me to update what I know about pdf files: what's the best way to create, change, read, and print them. For the past year or so I haven't done anything but read pdf files and that has been automatic with whatever Adobe has been sending updates about. Apparently something horrible happened to their installer, but mucking about fixed it. I haven't done much with pdf for a year or more, and apparently things have progressed since I last looked. In the old BYTE days the editorial people would keep me up to date whether I wanted them to or not. But then we had 30 crackerjack editors, some of the sharpest people in the industry; I miss the old BYTE a lot. I suppose all good things have to come to an end, and BYTE duly did, but it was great while it lasted. I still try to write the same column, and I have a pretty good group of volunteer advisors to keep me on track and sane. Which reminds me, it's time to do another column. Net neutrality among other things...

That took time. Then a reader sent me a message about H. Beam Piper, and reminded me that we met many years ago in State College, Pennsylvania; but when I try to reply I get a message telling me how I can apply to be in his good graces so I can send him mail, only that doesn't turn out to be easy to do either since I waited too long and EarthSink managed to lose the message I was sending. Another waste of time and I have deleted the whole mess: but please, if you send me mail and you expect me to respond, please do not send it in a way that guarantees my reply to your mail will be spam filtered and then I will get a message telling me how I can spend time getting in your approved list. I do try to reply to mail, particularly from people I have met, and it's pretty frustrating, especially if it hasn't been a great day to begin with.

Actually part of the day was pleasant. I had lunch with my friend John De Chancie, who writes SF adventure stories and was the most interesting secretary the LASFS has had in some time. I acted irked by some of his really amusing antics with the reading of the minutes, but that was more due to jealousy than anything else. Anyway it was a pleasant lunch.

I am about caught up with a bunch of stuff such as the ticket to the conference in DC. Of course the conference takes place the day before the Microsoft PDC in Los Angeles, meaning that I will miss the first day of PDC, since I'll be traveling on that Tuesday. I'll get down there Wednesday. The week of the 16th is going to be hectic.

Time Warner is currently experiencing difficulties...

2009-11-04T14:30:10-06:00

Time Warner is currently experiencing difficulties; which means we have neither Internet nor Cable TV at the moment (11:00 AM; my last email has a time of 10:24). Of course you won't see this until it's restored, although if it lasts much longer I'll go use an Internet Cafe to get this up and clear old email.

12:30 PM -- It's working again.

For platinum subscription:

Platinum subscribers enable me to work on what I think is important without worrying about economics. My thanks to all of you.

Patron Subscription:

Did you subscribe and never hear from me? Click here!.

There is mail today, and I put up a mixed bag of mail all interesting last night...

2009-11-04T14:30:09-06:00

There is mail today, and I put up a mixed bag of mail all interesting last night.

The upstate New York Congressional race just got more interesting. This...

2009-11-02T14:40:01-06:00

The upstate New York Congressional race just got more interesting. This is the place where a Republican from a usually safe Republican district went to the Cabinet and a very liberal person got the Republican nomination. So liberal was she that she garnered an opponent running on the Conservative ticket. Newt Gingrich for party tactical reasons endorsed the Republican; the vast majority of conservative spokespeople and celebrities endorsed the Conservative. In due season the liberal Republican, realizing she was not going to win, withdrew from the election -- but then endorsed the Democrat, which may have a lot to say about party loyalty. In any even it makes for a very interesting race.

The New Jersey governor race is also important and interesting, as is the Virginia race. If the conservative republican candidates do well, it will be a message of some importance in the coming debates on health care and cap and trade. In these by elections turnout is the key element: if those who feel strongly about cap and trade and Obamacare turn out and vote, and each one brings someone to the polls who feels the same way, the result could be quite important for the future.

Sunday Mail Roundup 13

2009-11-02T00:40:19-06:00

"In light of this, it's not surprising that two cases of whisky were...

2009-11-02T00:40:18-06:00

"In light of this, it's not surprising that two cases of whisky were overlooked."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/
article-439841/Preserved-ice-100-years-
whisky-Shackleton-used-cold.html

---- Roland Dobbins

Arrogance from Amazon.com

2009-11-02T00:40:17-06:00

Arrogance from Amazon.com

Dear Jerry:

I have not authorized Amazon.com to enable text-to-speech on the Kindle version of "The Shenandoah Spy". I am negotiating for an audiobook version with another publisher and don't want to mess up that deal. They went ahead and did it anyway. I also tried to drop the price on the Kindle version because the sales are so bad.

Here is their reply:

Hello from Amazon DTP.

I see that you've entered the new price for your book, however, it is not updated on our website, as your book was not re-published after changing the price. Please note that your new changes will not be updated on our website, until it is saved and published again. Also, note that whenever any book is published / re-published with new changes, it has to go through the review process by our kindle operations team, it takes up to 5 business days for the review to be completed.

Please note that at this time we are not supporting the feature to manage Text-to-Speech (TTS) settings through Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP), by default all the books are published with TTS enabled, we are unable to turn it off. We will continue to evaluate options for adding this to DTP customers in the future. If you still have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us at dtp-feedback@amazon.com.

Thanks for using Amazon DTP.

Given that the sales of the Kindle version are less than one percent of that of print version -- far less-- I begin to wonder if I should have a Kindle version at all. Amazon has never been vendor friendly. their arrogance here is breathtaking.

Sincerely,

Francis Hamit

Too many college bound students?

2009-11-02T00:40:16-06:00

Too many college bound students?

Jerry:

You've commented on this, and now someone else is saying something similar.

Send Fewer Students to College College is the wrong choice for many students, and will be for the foreseeable future.

By Robert VerBruggen

Marcus A. Winters says <http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=
ZDk5MjJjNDEyYjFhZjE2M2MzNDIzMTE5MTZlOTZiYjk=> we should “send more students to college <http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=
M2I2NmZiNmYwM2UwMGY3YzZiOWY
0NTliOTRkNTdjODE=#> .” He is responding, in part, to my NR piece <http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=ZmMzMjk3NzUwY2Y3MDlmYzM0OWM3NTM0ZTFkMDExYjk=> making the opposite case. My argument is that when 40 percent of college students fail to graduate in six years, and when about a quarter of employed college graduates have jobs that don’t require degrees, it’s obvious we’re pushing too many kids into higher education <http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2I2NmZiNmY
wM2UwMGY3YzZiOWY0NTliOTRkNTdjODE=#> .

Winters essentially (though not explicitly) concedes that now is not the time to ship more kids off to postsecondary institutions. He notes Charles Murray’s documentation of the fact that lots of today’s high-school graduates are not ready for college-level work. Winters disagrees, however, when Murray says there is very little we can do to change this.

<http://article.nationalreview.com/?
q=M2I2NmZiNmYwM2UwMGY3YzZiO
WY0NTliOTRkNTdjODE=>

Karl Lembke

I do note a trend toward new polytechnic colleges on line.

'Students watch monster films and write about what the creatures represent....

2009-11-02T00:40:15-06:00

'Students watch monster films and write about what the creatures represent. They also make their own monster films as a final project.'

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33536797/ns/us_news-education/>

-- Roland Dobbins

So where did the polar bears go? -

2009-11-02T00:40:14-06:00

So where did the polar bears go? -

And if the ice is gone, why didn't the ocean water level rise?

http://www.reuters.com/article/
scienceNews/idUSTRE59S3LT20091029

R, Rose

The polar bears are just fine. When floating ice melts, it doesn't raise the water level -- Archimedes and all that.

Jerry,

2009-11-02T00:40:13-06:00

Jerry,

Ms. Noonan today: http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB1000142405274870336370457
4503631430926354.html

We're Governed by Callous Children

Americans feel increasingly disheartened, and our leaders don't even notice.

<snip>

Part of the reason is that the problems--debt, spending, war--seem too big. But a larger part is that our federal government, from the White House through Congress, and so many state and local governments, seems to be demonstrating every day that they cannot make things better. They are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths--spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy locally and nationally. And in the long term everyone--well, not those in government, but most everyone else--seems to know that won't work. It's not a way out. It's not a path through.

And so the disheartenedness of the leadership class, of those in business, of those who have something.<snip>I talked with an (insurance) executive ... Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress "are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area." The executive said of Washington: "They don't understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who've said to me 'I'm done.' "<snip>

(1) Ms. Noonan apparently still believes that this "change" that nobody cares for is due to inept accident. An increasing majority of people, including her peers at the Journal and those who listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck, are convinced that this is as definitively planned as Frank's comment would suggest. It's characteristic that over the past few weeks as her negative reaction to the Administration has grown, many of the comments to her column have expressed that opinion and expressed gratitude that she is waking up to a truth that her anti-Bush attitude of the past few years has kept her from seeing until now. It's noteworthy that comments have apparently been disabled for her column this week; I would expect accident, but must wonder if it's a desire to avoid having hundreds of people post the observation I made at the start of this paragraph. (And yes, Beck has pulled together a convincing array of observations and connections. Also the increasing number of comments regarding Chicago-style intimidation politics. However, in both cases those memes have been there since long before the election. I have several friends and acquaintances who have become "birthers" -- I'm not sure whether to join them, or tell them that we have to focus on the ideas that we're fighting rather than the personality because the machine that is destroying the country will carry on more than adequately with Biden and Pelosi as the standard-bearers.)

(2) Having never done so before, I recently discovered an abridged audiobook of "Atlas Shrugged" -- 10 CD's, approximately 20% of the full text, which I have now also acquired -- and the parallels to current events are stunning. I was particularly taken with the observation of why Mulligan closed his bank in regards to those events.

article re TSA screening worth reading

2009-11-02T00:40:12-06:00

article re TSA screening worth reading

http://www.hlswatch.com/2009/10/15/

-- Brian

Did an Asteroid Impact Cause an Ancient Tsunami? - New York Times

2009-11-02T00:40:11-06:00

Did an Asteroid Impact Cause an Ancient Tsunami? - New York Times

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

More on the Burckle Crater in the Indian Ocean, and the dire implication: That the astronomers have it wrong, that we don't get hit with ten megaton range rocks "about" every ten thousand years, but rather an order of magnitude more often, i.e. once every thousand years.

The astronomers say not to worry, they know what is out there pretty much, and where the big ones are.. The problem with that is, they base their assurances on what they can see. If the rocks out there should prove to be denser and darker (lower albedo) than we think or expect them to be and hence harder to see, then they won't be detected until a big one goes "wham"

The implications for getting the human race to a point where we don't have all our "eggs" in one "basket" are obvious.

Once again,, :The map is not the territory", the model is not reality, and the "consensus" of the experts is likely wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/science/14WAVE.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

"But they might have more trouble believing one of the scientists, Bruce Masse, an environmental archaeologist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/
reference/timestopics/organizations/
l/los_alamos_national_laboratory
/index.html?inline=nyt-org> in New Mexico. He thinks he can say precisely when the comet fell: on the morning of May 10, 2807 B.C.

Dr. Masse analyzed 175 flood myths from around the world, and tried to relate them to known and accurately dated natural events like solar eclipses and volcanic eruptions. Among other evidence, he said, 14 flood myths specifically mention a full solar eclipse, which could have been the one that occurred in May 2807 B.C.

Half the myths talk of a torrential downpour, Dr. Masse said. A third talk of a tsunami. Worldwide they describe hurricane force winds and darkness during the storm. All of these could come from a mega-tsunami."

Petronius

Green jobs

2009-11-02T00:40:10-06:00

Green jobs

"Mr. McGarr said the project should create 2,800 jobs -- of which 15% would be in the U.S. The rest would flow to China, where Shenyang employs 800 people. http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB125683832677216475.html?
mod=rss_whats_news_us

"China is already a dominant player in solar panel manufacturing, and exports 95 percent of its solar components to the United States and Europe. http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/
2009/10/29/chinese-and-american
-partners-to-build-massive-west-texas-wind-farm/

Joe

England has moved?

2009-11-02T00:40:09-06:00

Subject: England has moved?

Hi Jerry

The powerpoint presentation of pictures of Earth from space is spectacular - thanks for the link.

One minor point for the less well travelled of your readership - the arrow purporting to point at England is actually pointing at Scotland. Both countries are part of the United Kingdom (for the time being).

Regards

Kevin Crisp

Mass web infections spike to 6 million pages

2009-11-02T00:40:08-06:00

Mass web infections spike to 6 million pages

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/
2009/10/27/mass_website_compromises_spike/

Mass web infections spike to 6 million pages

640k sites out to get you

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco

Posted in Security, 27th October 2009 17:47 GMT

An estimated 5.8 million pages belonging to 640,000 websites were infected with code designed to launch malware attacks on visitors, according to a report released Tuesday.

The numbers, compiled over the third quarter by security firm Dasient, represent a significant jump in number of legitimate websites that have been compromised. According to numbers Microsoft released on April, some 3 million pages were infected. The number of sites blocked by Google more than doubled http://www.theregister.co.uk/
2009/08/27/mass_web_infection/ ) between December and August, to almost 350,000.

"The bad guys are significantly taking advantage of attacking servers so they can distribute their malware to a very, very large number of clients," said Dasient co-founder Ameet Ranadive. "A lot of these infections are complex and often pretty obfuscated, so it's difficult for experienced webmasters to figure out what parts of their site have been infected and then to remediate it."<snip>

Friday Mail Roundup 6

2009-11-02T00:40:05-06:00

All Hallows' Eve

2009-11-02T00:40:01-06:00

All Hallows' Eve

I pretty much took the day off.

A topic for discussion

2009-11-02T00:40:04-06:00

A topic for discussion

Robert Frank: Will the Rich Evolve Into Different Species?
http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2009/10/28/
will-the-rich-evolve-into-different-species/ * October 28, 2009, 10:30 AM ET

The rich have already created their own country. Are they about to create their own species?

Futurologist Paul Saffo says rapid advances in biotechnology will enable people to grow their own replacement organs, take specially tailored drugs and use robots and artificial limbs to live longer.

But, he says, the advances will be affordable only by the super-rich. That raises the prospect of a new, biological divide between the classes, with the "rich evolving into a different species entirely, leaving his not-so-rich counterpart behind."

"I sometimes wonder if the very rich can live, on average, 20 years longer than the poor. That's 20 more years of earning and saving. Think about wealth and power and the advantages that you pass on to your children."

This is, of course, a disturbing and somewhat shocking prospect. Our wealth divide could become a health divide, which would further increase the wealth divide.

But is it realistic?

For one, we already have a health divide, where the wealthy receive (on the whole) much better care and technological benefits than the nonwealthy. Indeed, they have enjoyed better health care for centuries, and they have yet to form a race of super-rich cyborgs-in part because the wealthy in America is a fluid and rapidly changing group. <snip>

Species may be an exaggeration, but is the general hypothesis viable?

Large meteors are Common

2009-10-30T14:00:06-06:00

Large meteors are Common

"The late Eugene Shoemaker <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Shoemaker> of the U.S. Geological Survey <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Geological_Survey> came up with an estimate of the rate of Earth impacts, and suggested that an event about the size of the nuclear weapon that destroyed Hiroshima <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima> occurs about once a year. Such events would seem to be spectacularly obvious, but they generally go unnoticed for a number of reasons: the majority of the Earth's surface is covered by water; a good portion of the land surface is uninhabited; and the explosions generally occur at relatively high altitude, resulting in a huge flash and thunderclap but no real damage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event#Modern_impact_events

All in all we have been rather lucky. The only meteor in historic times to have, arguably, done real damage was the one that created the Burkle Crater in the Indian Ocean (app 2,800 BC) & even then there usn't real written evidence to support the calculated effects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burckle_crater

But the world is getting much more crowded.

Neil Craig

Yep

Shuttle Risk to Reach Hubble

2009-10-30T14:00:05-06:00

Shuttle Risk to Reach Hubble

There was an interesting comment in a recent article in the Air Force Magazine regarding the danger to the space shuttle on it's mission to service the Hubble Telescope. I'm curious as to how good an estimate that is?

"Traveling up to the Hubble telescope’s altitude required transit through a major debris field. As Palowitch described it, the worst debris in LEO is right in the Hubble’s band. The known debris put Atlantis “at a one-in-200 chance of being totally destroyed by impact in flight,” he said. When it landed, Atlantis was pockmarked with more debris hits than any other shuttle in history."

Insecurity in Space
<http://www.airforce-magazine.com/
MagazineArchive/Pages/2009/
October%202009/1009space.aspx>

Karl

Byzantium

2009-10-30T14:00:04-06:00

Byzantium

Dear Jerry Pournelle,

I found the following article in the weekly standard which you, as a much better studied classicist than I am, would be better able to comment on:

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/131xyleq.asp

The Byzantine Doctrine

Key graf:

"It got there not by opposing force against force, the classic "Roman" strategic approach, but through stealth, guile, propaganda, bribery and deception. With a relatively small but highly trained and professional army (generally recruited from the hard mountain tribes of Isauria or Anatolia; foreign mercenaries did not become a significant element in Byzantine armies until the 11th-12th centuries), Byzantine military power was potent but fragile. Capable of sophisticated combined arms tactics, even a small Byzantine force could defeat several times its numbers in barbarians or steppe warriors..."

Specific recommendation in the article are well worth reading, but too lengthy to discuss in this missive.

We have discussed on your web site the advisability of Republic versus Empire. It seems that our choices -- presented by the major parties -- are Scandinavia or Byzantium.

I'm a little bit surprised that the Byzantine approach is being recommended, because as stated in the article the Byzantines adopted the approach because it was "relatively impoverished, lacking the overwhelming material and manpower advantage possessed by Rome". Does this describe the United States?

It seems to me that the strategy they advocate is one which is best adopted by a culture in permanent decline. A culture which no longer has the courage and will to defend itself, which relies on deception and bribery (didn't they used to call it danegeld?) because it has lots of money and wealth but no courage or will.

And these are our hawks.

The really sad thing is, that there is *no reason* for the decline to occur in the US. We have wealth and territory exceeding Rome at it's height. We have technology the Romans never dreamed of. In your lifetime, we liberated the world twice, broke the sound barrier, and sent men to the moon.

If the US is sick and behaving like an enfeebled, decadent empire in its last gasps, then it is a disease purely of the will, like an eagle raised by chickens. We are still capable of great things if only we could remember who we were and what we are.

How can this evil spell be broken, I wonder? Where can we ditch the Scandinavia party and the Byzantine Party? Where's the Federalist party, blast it?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Byzantium was in many ways an admirable place, but hardly a model for a Republic. The Framers knew this. They did pay attention to Venice, as they should.

The US could still be a Republic, with few to no entangling alliances, and no involvement in the territorial disputes of Europe or Asia, and remain safe. It would cost less to be energy independent than the wars have been costing and will cost. It is not likely we will take that path.

As to the Federalist Party, I suppose I am one of it's theorists...

There are pro and con pieces in the Wall Street Journal today on net neutrality....

2009-10-30T14:00:02-06:00

There are pro and con pieces in the Wall Street Journal today on net neutrality. I have yet to see what is happening that need regulation; it all looks as if they are trying to fix something before it breaks. Perhaps that's a good idea, but it isn't always so.

Or it may be simple: somewhere out there is someone doing something without permission, and that has to be stopped. So far everything not prohibited is permitted, at least in some spheres, and that has to be stopped.

Pardon my gloom. I actually have to go out to Kaiser and get my glasses adjusted again, at least to undue yesterday's adjustment. I also got my regular seasonal flu shot and I suspect that is making me moody. At least I have some notions on what to do about Mamelukes, and I need to get to work.

Next Tuesday and the Ground Game

2009-10-29T12:50:03-06:00

Next Tuesday:

Next Tuesday's election is crucial to the health care debate. Both sides will be analyzing it to see what, if any, effects the national opposition to health care will have on elections.

I am sure most of you know this, but by-elections of this sort are nearly always determined the by the ground game: who can get their voters to the poles? It is an election among the committed.

The liberals have union troops to work this. Our side is not so well organized, and the Republicans have been notoriously lax in organizing precincts.

It is likely too late for those who care to go join a precinct organization. It is not too late to contribute. If everyone who has a strong opinion identifies one neighbor who feels the same way, and sees to it that that neighbor gets to the polls, the outcome of the election would be dramatically affected.

It is not too late to take back your government.

In general, Americans get the government they really want, and they get it good and hard....

Thursday Mail Roundup 5

2009-10-29T12:30:05-06:00

: Link to One Tribe at a Time PDF

2009-10-29T12:30:04-06:00

: Link to One Tribe at a Time PDF

Mr. Pournelle-

My apologies, I should have included a pointer in the original email. Here it is:
http://blog.stevenpressfield.com
/wp-content/themes/stevenpressfield/
one_tribe_at_a_time.pdf

-E

The following is more typical than I would like; I spare you some of it.

2009-10-29T12:10:10-06:00

The following is more typical than I would like; I spare you some of it.

Congress' four murderous words, and they are

....and for other purposes.

Four DANGEROUS little words read at the end of titles of every bill submitted and put up for debate in both houses of congress.

On rare occasions one of the House Reps or a Senator that author or support the bill will divulge one of the other purposes and briefly skip though what the purpose is which is normally pork or something else that will benefit one of their special interest parties revealing as little as possible with their usual pedant's politicobabble misdirection.

I don't know about the rest of the people in this nation, but I find those four word more than a bit ominous. We have no clue as to what's been tacked on as an other purpose because the bills and their attachments go unread; no more that the bill's title and those four words read out loud, and the other purposes never mentioned again during the debate or anywhere else to the best of my knowledge.

And we sure as hell aren't going to learn anything about those other purposes from Fox, CNN, political propaganda radio Air America or lush limbaugh and newspapers and TV news.

Darned few people in this nation outside people like me that tune in to both houses of congress every day they are in session, are even aware of these tacked onto bills "other purposes" evem exist until they get caught unaware off guard and have to empty their wallets by whatever one of the other purposes were.

The steeply declining lack of interest and lack of curiosity among the populous as to what's going on inside their own government in this nation, to this one person. is terribly disturbing. Unfortunately, and for the most part, the people I try to stay in contact with are permanent members of the choir so please turn to page fifty three...those that need the information the most....well what can ya honestly say about those poor souls and be nice.

A president named Pavlov is what this country needs and that name does ring a bell..what an inticing unconfuse the sheep idea.

Yup....that's it...president Pavlov first name Judas.

What's in those GD other purposes attachments you congress [expletive deleted].

These filled with ambiguity other purposes don't even appear in the online pubilcations and they can't be found in the Federal Register.

TP [emphasis added]

I have a new thought. Eternal vigilance is the price of victory.

There are sources, and despite your disdain I note that Limbaugh actually read portions of the proposed health care bill. Incomprehensible, of course, but that's not his fault.

It is still the case that Americans get the kind of government they seek, and they get it good and hard.

I feel like screaming from the battlements... am I wrong?

I don't normally believe everything on Mike Gallagher's show... too alarmist and self-serving (even when I agree with him). When he claimed senior citizens were hooked and booked from today's healthcare presser at the Capitol, I figured he was being an alarmist.

Then came this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-P-lRoquGY

IF this is true, then the Democrats have simply pushed aside the opposition party, the public, and all objections. I don't mean to be an alarmist, but (Again, if this is true) isn't this a plain assault on the Republic?

Anyone--ANYONE--who asserts he or she is acting as the Speaker, to tout the people's business, and who orders the exclusion of all who would object from a "pubilc" event, must be resisted by any legal means.

Please, please, tell me how I'm wrong.

This is hardly a new phenomenon.

Speakers are replaceable. Foley failed of reelection. Pelosi could be voted out of the position.

Eternal vigilance...

'The discovery suggests that massive stars were being born and exploding...

2009-10-29T12:10:09-06:00

'The discovery suggests that massive stars were being born and exploding in very short order after the birth of the universe.'

http://arstechnica.com/science/
news/2009/10/quantum-gravity-
theories-meet-a-gamma-ray-burst.ars

- Roland Dobbins

There is mail, all interesting, some alarming.

2009-10-29T12:50:02-06:00

There is mail, all interesting, some alarming.

If you can read and hear powerpoint (.pps) files...

2009-10-29T12:10:02-06:00

If you can read and hear powerpoint (.pps) files, this is worth your time. Pictures of Earth

Wednesday Mail Roundup 7

2009-10-28T16:00:17-06:00

: Obama putting $3.4B toward a 'smart' power grid - Yahoo! News

2009-10-29T12:10:07-06:00

: Obama putting $3.4B toward a 'smart' power grid - Yahoo! News

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091027/
ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_smart_grid

Dear Jerry:

You may recall when we had all that coverage on the Y2K problem that the power grid was considered one of the nightmare vulnerabilities. At last, ten years later, the work to fix it begins. This isn't stimulus, but deferred maintenance.

Sincerely,

Francis Hamit

Undetected 10m-diameter asteroid explodes over Indonesia, 50kt yield.

2009-10-28T16:00:15-06:00

Undetected 10m-diameter asteroid explodes over Indonesia, 50kt yield.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/
dn18046-asteroid-blast-reveals-
holes-in-earths-defences.html

<http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news165.html>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeQBzTkJNhs>

-- Roland Dobbins

“This is the problem of my country -- there is either total control...

2009-10-28T16:00:14-06:00

“This is the problem of my country -- there is either total control or no control at all. These are the only two possible positions.”

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world
/europe/28petersburg.html?&pagewanted=all >

---- Roland Dobbins

Afghan strategy

2009-10-29T12:30:02-06:00

Afghan strategy

Mr. Pournelle-

You may have already seen this but, just in case, I send it along anyway. I found it fascinating, though it does raise some questions it does not answer. Such as, what do you do when 'your' tribal leader finds himself in direct conflict with the local, nationally sanctioned, police? That very thing happened to my outfit at the same time Gant was in country, just further east in Gereshk.

-SSG E S

And it always will. What we call Afghan law and order is seen by tribal leaders as submission to the mayor of Kabul...

Jerry Pournelle

Absolutely. The paper, if you have time to read it (I know you're extremely busy) addresses that very point. Pretty well I thought.

-Ethan

The paper is a 2 MB pdf that is well worth reading but I don't have a pointer to it on line. I agree with the premise. Understand that if you pay tribute to a tribal Kahn you want to be careful to monitor what you get for your money -- and not to ask for too much. "Keep Al Qaeda out, and if they give you too much trouble invite our special forces in to kill them" is not a bad thing to pay for.

: Link to One Tribe at a Time PDF

Mr. Pournelle-

My apologies, I should have included a pointer in the original email. Here it is:
http://blog.stevenpressfield.com
/wp-content/themes/stevenpressfield/
one_tribe_at_a_time.pdf

-Ethan

Strykers Counterview

2009-10-28T16:00:11-06:00

Strykers Counterview

Dr. Pournelle:

For a different view regarding the color choice for Stryker vehicles, please see this piece by Michael Yon.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/colors.htm

Lee Keller King

China, Google, and malicious censorship

2009-10-28T16:00:12-06:00

China accuses Google of 'malicious' censorship • The Register

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/27/
china_peoples_daily_google_censorship_accusation/

Dear Jerry:

I think nothing more need be said here.

Sincerely

Francis Hamit

A correction from Wina Sturgeon

2009-11-02T00:40:03-06:00

Wina Sturgeon (widow of Ted Sturgeon) writes:

Correction

Hi Jerry,

Wow, came across your blog and you yourself, after all this time! Hope everything is well in your world. I'm still doing the organic garden thing, and after our big winter freeze storm two days ago here in Salt Lake City, my kitchen is filled with hastily picked tomatoes, cantaloupes and pumpkins---I will be spending the day working on assignments and dehydrating tomatoes.

I have a small correction to offer regarding your comment: I've told the story of Ted Sturgeon who raised rabbits and insisted on introducing you to your dinner if you came to his house for dinner. You got to pet it before he whacked it and skinned it. Oddly enough a lot of people only went once...

First, I actually raised the rabbits, Ted was the one who dressed them out, but it was never, ever done in front of anyone. He would kill the "dinner" long before any invited guests arrived. And in fact, rabbit takes about the same time as chicken to cook, so the rabbits that I roasted would have had to go into the oven long before any guests were scheduled to arrive.

Guests and friends who knew we raised rabbits would occasionally ask to see them. We would take them out the kitchen door to the hutches. We did not encourage anyone to pet them, ever. These were food animals. They weren't pets, and were never treated as pets, any more than a farmer's chickens would be treated as pets.

Perhaps you were just being satirical; but I'm concerned that someone may take your comment seriously. In addition, the "Oddly enough..." part of the comment may be humorous to you, but since it's far from the truth, I must tell you that I don't find it funny. I'd really appreciate you amending your comment. What I would consider more appropriate, if you don't mind the suggestion, is a comment on the fact that I tried to take responsibility for being a meat eater by raising our meat and creating a "green" lifestyle, long before green was cool.

Best,

Wina Sturgeon

To which I can only say she certainly ought to know; I admit that I never experienced watching Ted slay a rabbit. He did, however, tell the story of doing so, with gestures, not just once, and not just to me, and I will admit repeating it as if I might have seen it happen. I suppose I shouldn't have, since I didn't really believe he had done it -- but Ted wanted us to believe it.

Wina was really the green in the Sturgeon family, and this was long before green was cool. When I ran the Nebula Awards the year I was President of SFWA (early 1970's) I asked Ted to be one of the speakers, and his speech was a short warning against what he called "fossil fuels" collectively meaning coal and oil and I presume natural gas; the thrust of the speech was environmental impact. He was for nuclear power. This was very early in the green game. The notion of "living lightly" wasn't so much Ted's thesis as part of the Gaea movement, and I think all this predated the worries about CO2 and global warming: the big fear in those days was the return of the Ice Ages, and one of the indictments of fossil fuels was atmospheric particulate contamination which increased albedo and thus contributed to global cooling. Most was concern about "pollution" without a lot of specificity. Some of this is in A Step Farther Out, (the book) and more in the Galaxy columns of that time (Step Farther Out was the title of the science fact column I did every month in Galaxy). Wina used to do a regular radio broadcast on living lightly, and wrote a lot about it, and as you can see from the above, she certainly was into that a long time before it was fashionable; Ted was, let us say, not always eager to share the credit when he was out with the boys and Wina wasn't around, hence the story.

So to be clear, Wina gets the credit for living the soft path life, and she wasn't blatant about taking that credit. As to my remark that few came back a second time after watching their dinner be slaughtered in front of them, I honestly have to say I don't know if I made that up to be sardonic or Ted said it to be funny. It was certainly within his humor range. I should also make it clear that most of the interactions I had with Ted involved several other writers and a fairly large supply of free alcoholic beverages of many flavors and descriptions. In other words, we fell among evil companions...

The egregious Frum

2009-10-28T16:00:08-06:00

The Eggregious Frum gets taken to the woodshed by Hugh Hewitt

Dr. Pournelle,

The Eggregious Frum gets taken to the woodshed by Hugh Hewitt (via Hotair.com). 'Tis a wonderful thing!

“HH: You know what? I can’t swear, David. I can’t swear. But I have really had it with this stuff. Your drive-by treatment of fellow conservatives is outrageous. And then not to be able to back it up and defend it by citing line and verse, is outrageous. It’s slanderous. It’s the worst kind of yellow journalism practiced by drive-by leftists who you ought not to have anything to do with. And I am P.O’d about it now.

“DF: I’m sorry, are you, you are now saying that, the way, the things you just said, that’s responsible talk?

“HH: Yes, I am, because I’ve got you on the air talking to me, and I’ll let you tee off on me. But when you drive-by me in Newsweek, when you put on your blog that in essence accuses me of hypocrisy, you don’t recognize it, and you won’t own it, and you can’t cite anything, David Frum. You are an outrageous example of the worst kind of yellow journalism out there. And the way you treat Limbaugh and Levin and Hannity, who do 50 times the work of keeping conservative principles alive in this country, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

http://www.hughhewitt.com/transcripts.aspx?
id=e25ff8b4-ea79-4bee-b250-5141be7df6b1

-- Robin Juhl

I'm a long way behind in my work...

2009-10-28T19:30:01-06:00

I'm a long way behind in my work, and I have to get to it. Thanks to all who recently subscribed or renewed.

There is considerable mail including a letter from Wina Sturgeon, and a note about Google's malicious censorship according to China...

Those interested in the Afghan war should read http://www.annrachelmarlowe.com/...

2009-10-28T16:00:03-06:00

Those interested in the Afghan war should read
http://www.annrachelmarlowe.com/
2009/10/28/afghanistan-doesnt-need-
more-troops-with-cmdr-dave-adams-usn/

which tells how we were able to be so successful in our first efforts in Afghanistan. On the other hand, the definition of success was not building a centralized democracy run from Kabul.

I have one more proposal about Afghanistan: we should buy, on the open market, all the poppy crop. All of it. Let them grow and harvest the gum: we buy the gum. We can burn it, take it home for pharmaceutical purposes, sell it in China and India and Pakistan (perhaps we can have a war to force the Chinese to buy it? That has happened before) or just destroy it on the spot, but it would still be cheaper than letting it be sold to refiners and then trying to stop it from being smuggled into the US. Oh, yeah, the drug lords would find other sources, but this way we are not the enemies of the poor schlunks who are just trying to grow a crop. Even the Taliban used to let them grow the stuff, but then would try to stop the distributors from doing anything with it. I doubt that worked out very well for them. Not my problem.

Putting more money into the opium trade will drive up the supply, of course, but even so it will be cheaper than what we are doing; and enriching local tribal khans -- sometimes called warlords -- will help keep Al Qaeda out of their territories. Silver bullets often work wonders, and are sometimes cheaper than real ones. And no, that's not Danegeld. The Afghan warlords didn't invade us last night, and we're not paying them cash to go away. We're paying them cash to make our enemies go away. Hire and purchase...

A reader pointed me to an article about Stewart Nozette that doesn't tell...

2009-10-28T16:00:02-06:00

A reader pointed me to an article about Stewart Nozette that doesn't tell much I didn't know, but does quote me about him. I remain astonished.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/27/
AR2009102704121.html

I have got three new subscribers from this...

Teacher effectiveness

2009-10-29T12:10:06-06:00

Teacher Effectiveness

Dr. Pournelle,

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2009/Q4/view594.html#Monday

Perhaps it would be better to say that almost everyone thinks that teacher effectiveness is the single most important factor in education because the students' intellectual ability is usually not taken into account. I can understand saying so, because we do not know how to adjust intellectual ability, and getting better teachers is in fact straightforward as you say. However, as Charles Murray points out in his first simple truth of education, this work will be limited by the raw material, so to speak.

In this, as in most other things, I suspect that intellectual ability is the biggest single factor, but once this has been accounted for perhaps we could begin to start evaluating teacher effectiveness. I suspect that C, conscientiousness, from the OCEAN personality model would be a bigger factor than the teacher one has, but this is just my intuition. I have heard this bit about teacher effectiveness a lot recently, and I'm honestly not sure where the idea comes from that "studies" prove this to be true so conclusively that everyone can be said to know it. The work that I am familiar with is that of Dr. William Sanders and the Tennessee Valued Added Assessment System, and derivatives thereof. http://www.shearonforschools.com/TVAAS.html

I began looking into this because my Catholic school wants to be able to assess the actual amount of learning of each student each and every year. One system that has been used is the TVAAS, so I began reading up on it. It seemed promising, the attempt is to measure how much a student learns in a year compared to prior years based on an achievement test, and build up a model to predict the effect of the teacher on this process. As much as I like the idea, I found the execution of the TVASS wanting.

The two biggest problems I found were poor model building, and a basic failure to distinguish correlation from causation. The model Sanders used was very simple, school mean, plus teacher effect, plus error. Later analysis extends this through multiple years, but the model is similar. That model in itself isn't wrong, but really the problem is the effect in question being labeled as the teacher effect when all we really know from the data is that all these kids did in fact have the same teacher for one year. The question was never asked, were there *any* other relevant factors they had in common? I can think of three off the top of my head that are probably all correlated with student achievement, and each other. Any of the three could easily be substituted in the same model. Sanders simply assumed that all the variation associated with a cohort of students in one classroom must be due to the quality of the teacher, rather than investigating whether it was the case. No amount of statistical sophistication can fix the failure to investigate relevant factors, especially if the factors might be correlated.

The second problem is really just the observational nature of the study. I saw some references to this as a repeated measures study, but in fact it is not. I think there is a confusion here between the same students being part of the study, and what is actually measured, the improvement of a given student in a given year under a given teacher. That cannot be repeated, even though the same student can be assessed again in the future. We simply cannot take the same student and make them do the third grade over again with a different teacher, or even the same teacher. Thus we have a more limited scope for interpretation of results. At best, we can establish a correlation between whatever it is a given cohort of students has in common and their academic improvement over a given year. A more robust experiment would require rather more control over who goes to which teacher.

RAND did a good summary of all this. http://www.cgp.upenn.edu/pdf/rand.pdf

For all that, I'm not against encouraging effective teachers. I certainly can remember the teachers I liked the best usually were the best at teaching, but on the other hand, those teachers were clearly happiest when they had students who were willing and capable of learning themselves. Those teachers probably deserved to be paid more than they were. I just don't want us to pretend we know more than we really do.

-- Benjamin I. Espen

Apparently I haven't been understood; of course quality of students is important. But half the students are below average, and we can't drown them. Effective teachers can be effective at many different levels, and some teachers who are very good with bright kids can't teach normal and dull normal; but there are effective teachers who can. Our system is designed to keep them out of the system, or so it appears; but it's know they exist and are the main reason some schools are better than others. Throwing in more money does essentially nothing.

OF COURSE it's more fun to teach bright kids -- unless you are pretty stupid, which, alas happens. I have seen bright kids destroyed by dull teachers. When I had a clinical psychology practice lo these many years ago I only saw bright kids who had trouble in school (I get my patients from a pediatrician). But that's another story from long ago.

As to measuring teacher effectiveness. come now: we all know of both good and bad teachers, and if we don't it's not hard to find them. See some of the studies Gates has recently funded. We can find good teachers. No, the process won't be perfect. The perfect is the enemy of the good enough.

(5.1) The best high school level math teachers I ever heard of are USAF sergeants who teach math to USAF recruits. Having done this for 20 years they retire -- and are not considered "qualified" to teach math in public high schools. They haven't the proper credentials. To get the credentials they have to take a lot of Mickey Mouse courses on how to teach, which is discouraging and demeaning.

---------------------

I feel compelled to point out that military instuctors teach to a different set of people than the public school system does. The operative word is 'discipline'. The students have discipline and the instructors can dispence discipline in a fashion not available in the public schools. Maybe it should be, but we both know that will not happen.

Of course, but often discipline comes with learning. It's another conversation. My point was that the credentials we require don't have any value we can show.

Diamonds and jobs

2009-10-29T12:10:05-06:00

No Diamonds

Saw the article about Botswana diamond cutters and, while the larger education issues are worth considering, the real issue is that New York City doesn't have diamonds.

"in 2006. Renegotiating its mining deal with De Beers that year, Botswana announced it would license 16 international cutting firms willing to build factories here. In return for training locals to polish diamonds, the government said, these firms would eventually gain the right to buy rough diamonds in Botswana."

As for Canada, it's probably similar: "In early 1999 ... Tiffany purchased a minority stake in the 40%-owner of a mine in Canada's Northwest Territories."

I don't know if transportation of raw diamonds is a major factor in managing the supply chain, but they seem to be putting their polishing operations near the mines, which the U.S. doesn't have.

Patrick A. Bowman

Subject: Diamond cutters and education

Jerry,

I don't disagree with any of the points you make about education. But I'm not sure that the loss of diamond cutting jobs was a particularly good example to cite for problems in our educational system. From what I find on the internet, it appears that diamond cutting is almost entirely a skill based job, one that can be learned in 3 to 5 years, by someone with little education. At present, most of the worlds diamonds are cut and polished in India, with low wages being one of the reasons why cutting has migrated there:

----- http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GD26Df03.html

India threatens to dim Antwerp's glitter By Indrajit Basu

KOLKATA - The winds of change are sweeping across the global rough-diamond industry, a segment that lies at the core of a pulsating US$100 billion-plus jewelry industry. India, considered a rookie in the world of diamond processing until recently, is fast emerging as the epicenter of activity in this regard, and, much to the disbelief of many, is even threatening the global pre-eminence of Antwerp.

According to Hoge Raad Voor Diamant - HRD, or the Diamond Council of Belgium - diamond processing has completely moved away from the Belgian city of Antwerp to Surat in India, "which is the new epicenter", going by the volume of diamonds processed and the number of people involved.<snip>

But my point is that it is a skill based job, and we are not training workers in how to acquire skills. Why can we not compete in high skill jobs?

I've always advocated better education and an across the board tariff to level some of the playing fields. Ah well. Breakfast at Tiffany's

It does appear that Botswana has set conditions on access to its mines (smart move). But we can't compete with Canada?

Cold fusion

2009-10-29T12:30:01-06:00

Cold Fusion

I recall the Pons and Fleischman announcement years back when it first came out.

There were two items worth note.

No buildup of Helium or any fusion byproducts were found.

The electrodes used were ones which had not been 'annealed' that is, there were internal stresses which were releived in the course of the experiment, releasing energy. Attempts to reproduce the experiment showed annealed electrodes gave no extra energy.

At the time I recall thinking it was not a fraud, but careless science. Much like the AGW controversy today.

Cold Fusion Again.

Jerry, You make a good point that a supposed cold fusion device may merely be storing and then releasing the energy that has been put into it, possibly even including some of the energy used to fabricate the electrode. If this energy were then released after time had elapsed in response to an unknown trigger it would look like cold fusion. Rather like recharging a dead car battery.

I guess this is why you have an influential blog and I'm just a retired odd job man. Reluctant to abandon my theory I come up with the analogy of the unlucky alchemist who overturned his rack of chemicals,. By chance he had stacked the saltpeter, the sulphur, and the charcoal next to each other. A spark from his shovel set off what was the first blending of gunpowder. When the alchemist's lightly singed apprentice reported what had happened other alchemists tried to replicate the results. Naturally they mixed all of the chemicals that were known to be on the rack together on a small scale using a wooden spatula and were able to report to their funding client, The Guild of Bowmakers, that the reports were untrue since they could not be replicated

Perhaps this is like the elucidation of the basic laws of electromagnetism. Faraday, Ampere, Volta, and Ohm, all very good scientists just groped in the dark until the truth emerged.

John Edwards

There were many attempts to replicate the Pons and Fleischman experiments; most failed and those few that got odd results got lost in the noise of rejection. Apparently there is something there, but no one quite knows what; the Navy has quietly been paying for continuation of the research. I have no explanations, but it does turn out that there are data that need explaining. It may well not be fusion. It may be an energy storage effect, but something is happening. I recall that at the time, some prominent physicists thought of several ways that a fusion phenomenon wasn't impossible, but we'd need more data before it was worth a lot of time thinking about.

Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration (I believe I have his proportions right). Bob Forward and Richard Feynman used to say that what was needed was more data. Preferably from experiments directed by theory, but mostly more data.

The Afghan Situation: goals and costs.

2009-10-27T13:30:02-06:00

Several readers have called attention to this article:

U.S. official resigns over Afghan war - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/
AR2009102603394.html?hpid=topnews
&sid=ST2009102603447

The official is a Marine with Iraq war experience, no longer serving, who was until recently the highest U.S. gov't official in a remote province.

This article supports much of what you have been saying about Afghanistan. I especially liked "Valley-ism".

Regards,

Jim Riticher

We can also add this:

"The U.S. and NATO presence in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non- Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified."

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/
AR2009102603394_pf.html >

-- Roland Dobbins

I don't like either article, but facts are stubborn things. It has ever been thus in Afghanistan: the one thing that unites Afghanistan is their hatred of armed Afghanis in their country; while the non-Pashtun areas are united in their determination that Kabul's writ does not run in their homes. It will take a very long time to change these attitudes.

I agree with the generals: the only way we could remake Afghanistan is through a very long term effort in which we make long term commitments to friends and allies, and take on the long term task of protecting isolated villages, avenging those of our friends who are killed or kidnapped, and in general making Afghanistan a protectorate essentially forever.

It is not in the national interest of the United States to do this. The people of the United States would have to pour blood and treasure into an area -- it is not a nation -- that has no products we want, is the world's largest source of opium, and which has been the graveyard of empires from the time of Alexander the Great. Yes, we can do it, at a cost of somewhere between 100 and 1000 troopers a year for the next thirty years, and commensurate amounts of blood and treasure. The costs will also include disruption of the lives of the troops deployed. The costs will include rehabilitation of the wounded and shell-shocked. It will be divisive for as long as we are there. The benefits will be blooded veteran Legions, but Legions deployed in Afghanistan cannot be deployed elsewhere without forfeiting the mission.

And make no mistake: once that mission begins, it cannot be ended in my, and probably not in your, lifetime.

Are the people of the United States ready to make such a commitment? If we are, can we commit the next generation? And the next? Does the United States have the will and stamina to continue an expensive war with very little visible progress, a war costly in blood and treasure, with maimed troops returning to be rehabilitated if possible but at least partially disabled for life? And keep in mind the lack of visible progress. A village here, another over there, in which the locals finally decide to open a market in the hopes that we can prevent them from being slaughtered for doing so; followed almost inevitably by an IED placed in that market, with consequent casualties, a military surge in that region in hopes of finding the culprits who may have come from far away -- You can write the scenarios as well as I can. Progress will be slow. How long will the American people put up with this before they heed a political leader who promises to stop the bleeding? Particularly if there is some scandal (think Watergate) and a demand for Change We Can Believe In This Time For Sure.

If we make the commitment, will we keep it? If we make the commitment and do not keep it will we be better off then than now? If the Legions pledge to protect, then are brought home to leave their friends to be slaughtered, how will that affect our military strength.

These are the factors we must consider. They are not the facts I would prefer. But once again I ask: those are the costs, and I do not think I have overestimated them. What are the benefits?

So what should we do?

The objective is that Afghanistan not harbor our enemies. We neither want nor need anything Afghanistan produces. We just don't want their territory used as a base for our enemies.

Perhaps the cheapest way to achieve that is to make it clear what we want, and what we will pay to achieve it: silver bullets are often a key to victory, especially if backed up with the quite real promise of return if we do not get our money's worth. If that seems craven or futile, what are the alternatives?

Monday Mail Roundup 10

2009-10-26T16:00:17-06:00

Train them up young! -

2009-10-26T16:00:15-06:00

Train them up young! -

http://www.reuters.com/article/
oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE59P3KL20091026

ARRGH! Teach them to read, write, and do arithmetic. Have them do some homework and chores. Let them play! I can't imagine having to decide what to do with your life at age 9.

R,
Rose

Why we're losing in the Middle East

2009-10-26T16:00:14-06:00

Why we're losing in the Middle East

They are JUST NOW getting around to thinking about maybe painting the Stryker armored vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan tan. Instead of dark green.

http://www.military.com/news/article/
strykers-going-tan-for-desert-look.html

This is wholly unbelievable.

-- Tim of Angle

Coming soon to a bank near you?

2009-10-26T16:00:13-06:00

Coming soon to a bank near you?

British cops raid safety deposit boxes. Thousands of law-abiding people's assets confiscated to catch a handful of criminals.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/
moslive/article-1222777/The-raid-rocked
-Met-Why-gun-drugs-op-6-717-safety-
deposit-boxes-cost-taxpayer-fortune.html

Most poignant was the line "POCA was never intended for this. No one objects when criminals are caught and their assets seized - but shaking down everyone to get to them is specifically not what lawmakers wanted."

Perhaps "never intended" should become some sort of enshrined classicism for out-of-control law-enforcement and the laws that abet them? As a wordsmith, perhaps you can give us the proper phrasing?

I envision something like: ". . . but we _never_ intended _that_ when we changed the law!" or something similar. Might make a thought-provoking bumper sticker, no?

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

John

"Better a thousand innocents convicted than one guilty man go free." - attributed to Heinrich Himmler

Continuing

2009-10-26T16:00:12-06:00

Continuing

Again, the demand for something free is infinite...

<http://slatest.slate.com/id/2233576/entry/2/>

David Couvillon
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Collector of Hot Sauce; Avoider of Yard Work

Iron Law and Canada

2009-10-26T16:00:11-06:00

Iron Law and Canada

The breakdown for the Canadian public service, is hardly an aristocracy that permeates all our lives. Over 40 percent of our public service consists of the military and the Federal police department. When it comes to recessionary periods, there is usually a giant layoff of public service employees, in the 90’s over 40000 layoffs, I believe. Then it tends to gradually rebuild itself. The US has 1.2 percent in the public service, though I don’t believe the Military counts for that total.

Size and distribution

The public service has expanded over the years as population has grown, the number of services provided to Canadians has increased and with the introduction of new offices throughout the country. The service has also been reduced several times, often due to restraint programs designed to reduce the cost of the civil service.

Year Size of civil service (CS)[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_of_Canada> [4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_of_Canada> national pop. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Canada> [5] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_of_Canada> CS as a % of national pop.

1918 ~ 5,000 ~ 8,500,000 0.05%

post-World War I <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I> 55,000 (1923) ~ 13,500,000 0.41%

1970 198,000 21,500,000 0.92%

1975 273,000 23,400,000 1.2%

1986 217,000 26,101,000 0.83%

2006 454,000 32,248,000 1.4%

As of September, 2006, there were approximately 454,000 members of the Canadian civil service,[6] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_of_Canada> divided as follows:

* Core public administration: 180,000

* Canadian Forces <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Forces> and Royal Canadian Mounted Police <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Canadian_Mounted_Police> (RCMP): 106,000

* Federal business enterprises (including crown corporations): 88,000

* Separate agencies: 60,000

* Other (e.g., Senate <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_of_Canada> and the Canadian House of Commons <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_House_of_Commons> ): 20,000

There are approximately 100 distinctly different positions in the Canadian public service; most work in policy, operations or administrative functions. About 15% are scientists and professionals, 10% work in technical operations and 2.5% are executives.[7] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_of_Canada>

About 42% of Canadian public servants work in the National Capital Region <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Capital_Region_(Canada)> (NCR) (Ottawa-Hull), 24% work elsewhere in Ontario <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario> or Quebec <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec> , 21% in Western Canada <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Canada> , and 11% in Atlantic Canada <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Canada> . Since the headquarters of most agencies are located in the NCR, about 72% of executives work in this area.[7] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_of_Canada>

Canadian civil servants are also located in more than 180 countries and provide service in 1,600 locations in Canada.

David March

Transport Coordinator

Thanks

the tax returns of F. Scott Fitzgerald

2009-10-26T16:00:10-06:00

the tax returns of F. Scott Fitzgerald

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/living-on-500000-a-year/print/

<http://www.theamericanscholar.org/living-on-500000-a-year/print/> He fairly consistently earned 24,000 /year; roughly equal to half a million today an interesting read from several points of view

Mike

Reinventing Heinlein - again.

2009-10-26T16:00:09-06:00

Reinventing Heinlein - again.

Jerry

Rigid sky-train to fly through magnetic rings on sticks. The story covers the sky train as well as highways running hovercraft at 500 mph:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/22
/ring_pole_train_psychologists_nightmare/

Hmm. Robert featured exactly both of these in Starman Jones <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416505504> , which is still in print.

Hmm again. I haven't read my copy in a few years. Time to reread it.

I want my future back. We used to look forward to seeing such things in our lifetime.

Then there's

An article on "the future" from Big Hollywood/Breitbart

Dr. Pournelle:

An interesting article that calls out your High Frontier and Niven's Known Space.

Is safety really stifling the future?

<http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/
bwillingham/2009/10/25/ive-seen-the-
future-and-it-is-safe/>

While we've had some incredible advancements in the last fifty years, they havn't been in the areas Mr. Heinlein and Dr. Asimov thought.

We've had revolutions in communications, computing, medical care, and even in distribution. That's great, if you want to talk to your Mom in Paducah, surf the net for the perfect hummus recipe, get an MRI, or find fresh strawberries in December at your local supermarket. A lot of these technologies are safe. There is little "daring" anymore. I see the private company adventures toward space as thrilling, but will they ever lead to anything more than LEO? I'll be 49 in December. Will I ever go to the moon? Thirty years ago I thought, "Yeah, baby!" Today, not so much. Alas.

Best regards,

Bill Kelly
Director of Technical Writing

I want my future back.

Simulations and reality

2009-10-26T16:00:16-06:00

: re: runaway Lexus

When I was in engineering school around 2000 there was talk that the car companies were talking about eliminating the mechanical rack and pinion steering mechanism in cars and replacing it with sensors in the steering wheel and servos to turn the steering. Everyone seemed mightily impressed by that until I said, "But what happens if there's a malfunction and the motor goes on and you turn a sharp left on the expressway?"

"Well, they'll have failsafes on that."

I shook my head. "I wouldn't trust it. Nothing replaces having a mechanical conection between my hands and the ground."

I couldn't convince the rest of them that it was a Very Bad Idea.

Looks like some of them work for Lexus now, maybe...

Paul

Simulations and Reality

Some interesting thoughts about simulations that don't necessarily head where one might think...

http://perrinelson.com/2009/10/26/1383.aspx

"...All of these models were simulations of reality. Mine were merely crude simulations of reality, but the ones my dad built were more refined and accurate, with the model aircraft being the most accurate of all of them. None of them worked exactly the way their real world counterparts did though, although the aircraft came closest. And, while my models and my dad’s were built over thirty years ago, people still do this kind of model building today. Some still choose to do it with physical materials, but not all models can be built that way.

A computer simulation is a tool that can show you what /might /happen when a particular event occurs. The accuracy of a simulation depends on many things. The most important part of a computer simulation is the underlying model. For computer simulations this generally involves iterative calculations of many mathematical equations. How accurately the mathematical equations describe the physics of the world has a significant effect on how accurate the simulation is when compared to reality. Another factor that affects the correspondence of a computer simulation’s results to reality is the fudge factors used – values supplied to various parameters in the equations being processed that have to be assumed or measured and input. Yet another factor affecting how closely a simulation matches the real world is the assumed initial conditions. In chaotic systems, like particle flow in viscous media for example, small differences in initial conditions can have significant effects on the end product of the calculations...

...Computer simulations are fantastic scientific tools, but they’re NOT science. They’re merely technology applied to scientific theory. You cannot prove a theory using a simulation, but you can disprove one by comparing the results of the theory’s predictions against reality. Ultimately, scientific theories, and computer simulations are nothing more than models. They’re not reality. They can help you predict what might happen if your assumptions are correct, but they’re not a substitute for actual experimentation and measurement...."

David Needham

An old discussion in the operations research community.

Even older:

The map is not the territory.
First principle of General Semantics.

Letter from England

2009-10-26T16:00:06-06:00

Letter From England

I can't make this up--league tables for universities. See <http://tinyurl.com/yfhk2mb >. From the Guardian article: "A rating system for every course, setting out five key measures: the pass rate, student satisfaction (from surveys), employment rate, wage gain for students, and inspection results." This was an obvious next step ever since they put the 'Ministry for Business' in charge of higher education. Comment by Sally Hunt: "The league table culture has been a disaster in schools and hospitals. If applied to colleges it will lead to a narrowing of the curriculum and an impediment to innovation." I have watched a local university restructure itself to improve in those five measures, and as part of its process, it dropped its advanced programmes and research. You want it bad; you get it bad.

UK economy still in recession. <http://tinyurl.com/yj8gnlw> <http://tinyurl.com/yjlnzmg > <http://tinyurl.com/ylzgut5> <http://tinyurl.com/yjhywf3>

BNP leader on radio. I listened to a bit of it, and heard him express some really nutty ideas. Apparently, some people found him convincing.

<http://tinyurl.com/yh5onjv> <http://tinyurl.com/yfy57vs> <http://tinyurl.com/yjqqb7u > <http://tinyurl.com/yj3s6o7>

Postal strike continues. Union activists are collecting donations to help the strikers, but are shaking their heads privately--neither side can win. The 'Ministry for Business' is using this as an opportunity to break the union, but it's also destroying the Royal Mail. You want it bad; you get it bad. <http://tinyurl.com/ykrhtl5> <http://tinyurl.com/yjbmqho >

Swine flu worse than expected. <http://tinyurl.com/yld7cjf> <http://tinyurl.com/ygh67x9 >

Harry Erwin, PhD

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." (Catherine Aird)

Bottom line here:

2009-10-26T16:00:03-06:00

Bottom line here:

The important issue here to convey to your readers is to NOT turn off the engine if the accelerator is stuck, but to put the car in Neutral and use the brake and steering (still functional since the engine is running) to steer the car to the side of the road and safely stop.

...Rick...

Especially if there isn't any key to begin with. I suppose they ought to train new drivers to put the car in neutral if the accelerator is stuck. Note that one of the fatalities was in a car driven by a Highway Patrolman (off duty). One presumes that Highway Patrol officers know how to drive; yet he was killed about four seconds later. A passenger in the car was on 911 reporting it at the time of the crash. So it's not entirely obvious what one ought to do: Now we know. Get it out of gear but leave the motor running...

For platinum subscription:

Platinum subscribers enable me to work on what I think is important without worrying about economics. My thanks to all of you.

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All of which probably shows just how far out of date I am:

2009-10-26T16:00:02-06:00

All of which probably shows just how far out of date I am:

Dr. Pournelle:

The problem with turning off the engine on a 'runaway' car is that you lose power to steer and brake the car (just about all cars have power steering and power brakes, I believe). Better to put the car in Neutral and coast/brake to the side of the road. Once you are safely stopped, then you can turn off the car.

Even if this process damages the engine (due to over-revving), you can still stop safely and save your life.

Regards,
Rick Hellewell

and Peter Glaskowsky adds

I strongly agree. The old advice about cutting the ignition dates back to the days before power steering and brakes.

Every driver should be prepared to react to a runaway engine by shifting into neutral and braking normally.

I wouldn't worry about the over-revving problem when the engine's under no load. That ought to be less harmful than revving to the red line while in gear, and I do that all the time. :-) The car will be stopped in just a few seconds anyway.

At that point, you can turn off the ignition and reach down there to get the floor mat off the gas pedal, or un-wedge the kid's pacifier or the dog's squeaky toy, or remember to lift your right foot, whatever's causing the problem.

Back in 2002, when I did the three-day driving school at the Nurburgring in my new BMW M3, one section of the course involved learning how to stop a car in the event of brake failure on a steep Alpine downhill road-- by scraping the right side of the car along the guard rail. We actually got to try this process a couple of times with relatively new BMW 320's. Lots of fun.

. png

The last time I had to turn off the ignition on a car was with my International Harvester Scout, which had power steering and brakes but was steerable and stoppable without them. I forget the emergency; it was way off road in the Arizona desert. My Bronco could also be driven safely without power on, but it wasn't fun without the power steering. I never tried it with the Explorer.

When one is going 132 feet per second and the accelerator is stuck there isn't a lot of time to think of what to do; taking it out of gear seems reasonable if that will work, and I expect that is what one ought to learn. Is that the logic of making it impossible to turn off the key? Still, I'd rather be steering a powerless car than continuing to go under power. It's going to stop if the ignition is off, although I expect it will take longer if you don't have power assist -- assuming that adrenalin isn't a power assist.

I gather that with some cars you can turn the key off without putting it in park; in others you can't. Perhaps I am mistaken. With the Lexus in question there isn't any key to begin with, and at 132 feet per second there's not a lot of time to look up in the manual what to do...

See mail for more discussion.

APOD: 2009 November 1 -The Average Color of the Universe,

2009-11-02T00:40:07-06:00

APOD: 2009 November 1 -The Average Color of the Universe,

Jerry

Astronomers have not only found the color of the universe, but they had a competition to name that color:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091101.html

And here we thought the sky was black (or, in LA, the color of low pressure sodium lamps reflected against the smog).

We actually don't have much smog in LA now, and the skies are blue in daytime. Alas, the battle for low pressure sodium bug lights was lost long ago.

I have been under the weather and took the day off.

2009-11-02T00:40:06-06:00

I have been under the weather and took the day off.

Eve of All Hallow's Eve

2009-10-30T14:00:03-06:00

Eve of All Hallow's Eve

Belated happy birthday wishes

Jerry:

I was browsing through Der Spiegel and noticed yesterday was the 50th birthday of Asterix the Gaul, his friend Obelix, and the entire gang.

The first publication of Asterix the Gaul was October 29, 1959, in a two-page layout.

So raise a glass of Druid potion in their honor!

..............Karl Lembke

But Getafix won't permit Obelix to drink the Druid potion...

Jerry,

Either this is just a fun exercise or those folks in Florida have gotten into a stash of really good stuff…. J

http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~jybarra/zombieplan.pdf

Tracy Walters, CISSP

"Smart" Power Grid

2009-10-29T12:30:03-06:00

"Smart" Power Grid

Jerry,

Let's see, we are now proposing to build a Coast to Coast "Smart" Power Grid. Looks to me as if we are setting ourselves up for a National rather than a Regional blackout.

I have little confidence in our ability to produce "man" rated software. At one time we were able to do it, but somewhere along the way the most basic concepts of producing reliable software have been forgotten.

Among these concepts are:

Allowing for ALL possible conditions.

Fully and rigidly defining ALL inter-program interfaces before writing a line of code.

Complete range checking, i.e. no possibility of "buffer overflow."

Complete inter-program parameter Type checking.

The recent fatal crash of two Washington DC Metro trains is an illustration of the idiocy that passes for program design and implementation.

This crash was blamed on a faulty sensor that failed to indicate to the system that the lead train was stopped at a station. Obviously, the control system knew about the lead train at some point before it got to the station. The incompetent developers of the train control system did not include the ability for the system to realize that, suddenly, a train that had been under control of the system was no longer being tracked by the system.

I wrote my first computer programs in 1964. If I had been so lax I would have been out of a job forthwith and my error would have been discovered long before any of the faulty code had actually been put into service.

Bob Holmes

Centralization creates point failure systems; I have never thought that a good idea. The notion of the ARPA net was to decentralize and provide multiple routes in case of disasters. I don't see how to do that with a national power grid. On the other hand, I was much opposed to the idiotic power giveaways that separated generation from delivery. The Independent power distribution system (ISO) in California doesn't seem to be working as well as predicted. Odd, that.

smart grid v sun

Everyone says we must have a "smart" power grid. I don't know what that means. If it means a computer at every node, what happens when we get a solar storm like the one in the 19th cen that lit up the telegraph grid like a Christmas tree? If the smart grid nodes are all fried it will take months to get power back and meanwhile we will starve. Please tell me where I am wrong.

I don't remember whether I posted the last of yesterday's mail with the note...

2009-10-28T16:00:09-06:00

I don't remember whether I posted the last of yesterday's mail with the note about the Egregious Frum.

'Amazon for example, says that people with Kindles now buy 3.1 times as many...

2009-10-26T16:00:08-06:00

'Amazon for example, says that people with Kindles now buy 3.1 times as many books as they did before owning the device.'

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/technology/21books.html>

--- Roland Dobbins

A really fascinating statistic. One wonders if it will hold up. We can hope so.

Keeping the Subjects from Rebelling

2009-10-26T16:00:07-06:00

Keeping the Subjects from Rebelling

The snoops expand their snooping. <http://tinyurl.com/yzbr7zz> http://tinyurl.com/ykgoxbs

> <http://tinyurl.com/yldrch9> <http://tinyurl.com/yhd8xn6> http://tinyurl.com/yfpemmy

> <http://tinyurl.com/yj6x5fm>

Meanwhile the probation service can't keep tabs on offenders out on

release: <http://tinyurl.com/ykt2sos> <http://tinyurl.com/yzgh7y8>

Possible but unlikely changes to vetting scheme for parents http://tinyurl.com/yjbxfj3

Criminal libel laws to be repealed? <http://tinyurl.com/yjy4gp2>.

Ministers back down from cutting the Territorial Army http://tinyurl.com/yl8bul8

Harry Erwin, PhD

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." (Benjamin Franklin, 1755)

All Hallows' Day

2009-11-02T00:40:02-06:00

All Hallows' Day

We had perhaps half the number of kids ringing the doorbell last night. Whether this is due to the economy I do not know. It's a guess. We live in a quiet middle class neighborhood, and for years we've noticed kids who don't live anywhere near us coming around. We assumed they were brought in by parents looking for a safe neighborhood. Most visitors in previous years were costumed, but many were not, and some were wearing obviously home made costumes. This year I think just about all were in costume, some fancy, most not. We recognized most of the neighborhood kids, and some who clearly are not from around here, but there were a lot less of them. I don't really know how the economy affects Halloween door to door activities.

I've been very much under the weather yesterday and today. I''ll be back on the job tomorrow. I have put up a mixed bag of mail, all interesting, no single topic.

Another work day.

2009-10-30T14:00:01-06:00

Another work day.

Tuesday's election remains crucial. The vote will be small, so the turnout will be important. For once I urge you: vote, and make certain at least one other person of your persuasion votes. The ground game is important.

You may believe as much of the economic recovery news as you want to. Until the healthcare and cap and trade uncertainties are resolved, there isn't going to be a recovery, we will not be producing much, credit will be tight, and no one dares hire people when there's no indication of how much the next worker will cost. Moreover, few "small" businesses want to grow until they know what new regulations and costs adding the 50th employee will subject them to.

None of this takes genius to understand, nor do I think it is much in dispute; but in this land of hope and change few among our masters act as if they ever heard of the notion, or that it matters. Perhaps government owned facilities will be the future employers. Government motors, arsenals and Navy Yards, scientific laboratories, condom manufacturers, medical equipment manufacturers -- government can invest money, and deal with the regulations. Perhaps that is our way out.

If you can read and hear powerpoint (.pps) files...

2009-10-29T12:10:03-06:00

If you can read and hear powerpoint (.pps) files, this is worth your time. Pictures of Earth

The news today is that there's yet another "final" health care bill, this one with the public option. Since the purpose of all this is to end private health care insurance and drive the US to a European style single-payer system, the details aren't really important: the real question is, do we want or need the end result? Once the "comprehensive reform" process gets started, it will be hard to stop.

It is simply not true that if you are satisfied with what you have, you will not have to change it. Any "comprehensive reform" will have at least the provision that health insurance cannot refuse applications for pre-existing conditions, nor can it charge more to those who are already sick than it does to those who buy the policy when well; plus mandatory coverage of all kinds of conditions and treatments depending on the effectiveness of lobbyists in getting their clients services (mental health, maternity, various forms of counseling, osteopathy and chiropractic, homeopathic medicine, etc.) included, meaning that those who can't use those services must pay the same premiums as those who do. Those conditions alone will force premium costs up. Adding more people to the rolls whether they can pay or not will also force premiums up -- or will require subsidies, meaning either higher taxes or more operational expenses to be paid for with more borrowed money and thus increased debt.

The counter argument is that we'll save all those costs and keep the premiums down by eliminating fraud and waste. The rest will be covered by soaking the rich, and that won't affect the middle class. You can believe as much of that as you want to. Oh -- and there will be taxes on "medical devices" such as walkers, wheel chairs, tampons, condoms, crutches, Ace bandages, diabetes meters, blood pressure meters, thermometers, splints, braces, joint restricting boots, MRI and X-ray machines, and other such devices, thus raising their prices without increasing profits. What that will do to investment in research to improve such devices isn't known, but I think it's predictable. Generally such taxes tend to restrict entry into an industry, thus consolidating it with fewer firms and less competition. Adam Smith wrote about such matters a long time ago.

When all this is finished we will be getting health care at least as good as we have now, without significantly increasing costs or taxes, and lowering the percentage of GDP that goes into health care. You may believe as much of that prediction as you want to.

We are also told that the recession is over, because government has spent enough money to have the GDP go slightly up. Given that unemployment is still rising, you can believe as much of that as you want to as well.

We are moving toward the European style of modern state. It is change you can believe in. It is not too late to stop this trend, but the hour is late. Of course nearly everyone who reads this already knows it.

We have considerable mail on auto ignition...

2009-10-28T16:00:01-06:00

We have considerable mail on auto ignition, education and diamond cutting, and other topics from yesterday.

The Ignition Failure in the Lexus

2009-10-26T16:00:01-06:00

I keep hearing about the Lexus whose accelerator gets stuck and the car can't be stopped. When I was a lad, the simple thing to do was to turn the ignition off if something like that happened. The engine stops, and you can coast to a halt. Or, with a stick shift, take the car out of gear. I've not tried to put my Explorer in neutral while going fast, but I presume you can do that; of course if you're suddenly going 100 mph and coming up on a canyon you might not think of that. But what genius decided that we are all safer for not being able to remove the key to stop the engine when the car is running? I do not understand the logic here. I was always taught that if the throttle got stuck -- there were throttle controls on cars when I learned to drive -- you take the key out of the ignition. The car will stop.

What is the logic of not allowing the ignition to be turned off while the car is running?

(I have just been told that with the Lexus, no key is inserted to begin with; there is a button you can press and hold for three seconds (at 132 feet per second) which will stop the ignition. Read the flipping manual if you don't know that. All your fault if you don't RTFM.) I still don't understand the logic of making it hard to turn off the ignition when the car is running.

On Cold Fusion

2009-10-26T14:30:27-06:00

Cold Fusion.

Jerry,

Cold fusion rears its ugly head again. Serious report on 60 minutes at http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?
id=4967330n&tag=related;photovideo

Yup, it works.

Let the record show that twenty years ago John Edwards said that Fleichman and Pons, respected and established scientists, would not commit professional suicide by announcing a fraud. Whatever their colleagues said. Therefore it is a real phenomenon.

Your correspondent in the tinfoil hat.

John Edwards

The video is well worth watching. It is apparently established that more energy comes out than goes in -- sometimes. As to the obligatory skeptic, I have encountered Richard Garwin before, and he has always put his politics ahead of his judgment; his "analysis" of Strategic Defense was a travesty of physical analysis, and his candidate for basing ICBM's was so ridiculous that I had real trouble getting my staff to take it seriously long enough to do an actual analysis.

I have no idea what is going on with "cold fusion" or whether it's any kind of fusion at all. I do know that several physicists whom I respect take the data seriously. I have also seen non-fusion explanations of the bursts of output based on chemistry -- the palladium stores energy and gives it off unexpectedly, then recharges -- but apparently that explanation doesn't cover all the data, and the hypothesis has been tested.

Clearly something of this sort would quite literally change the world if it can be harnessed. Hot fusion has been coming in about twenty years for the past forty years (it's always twenty years away) and while it's possible to do hot fusion by brute force, it's expensive and the path to any kind of reliable commercial energy source is unknown. I don't expect to live to see practical hot fusion. I am not quite so sure regarding cold fusion. It's unlikely but there's still data to be accounted for.

As to the original announcement, their real regret is that the word "fusion" was used. The energy burst was certainly there. That was the phenomenon that ought to have been analyzed, and it was not a fraud; it was just ignored. The whole incident is another reminder of why Big Science can really Fail Big sometimes.

Education and job skills: why can't the US compete?

2009-10-29T12:10:01-06:00

We had breakfast after church this Sunday with our energetic friend Joanie who retired as an assistant principal in Glendale then became principal of a Catholic school in Los Angeles. That got me thinking about the abysmal public education system in the United States.

This morning's Wall Street Journal has an article: "Diamond Industry Makeover Sends Fifth Avenue to Africa" about how Tiffany is training diamond cutters in Botswana.

It seems to me the two topics are related. If a Fifth Avenue company can train people in Botswana to cut diamonds, surely there are Americans who can learn to do that job? So what's the problem here? Education system, regulations on hiring and firing, worker attitudes? If New York City can't compete with Botswana (and Canada!) as a place to teach apprentice diamond cutters, in just what jobs can we compete? There was nothing about that in the Wall Street Journal article; apparently it's just a given that corporations don't want to invest capital in creating high skill jobs anywhere in these United States. Should we all be concerned?

Regarding education, nearly everyone knows that:

(1) The single most important factor in education is the classroom teacher. Study after study has shown that getting the best teachers is more important than class size, administration, textbooks, or anything else.

(2) If the bottom 10% of teachers were replaced by average teachers -- not outstanding, just average -- the US education system would be enormously improved.

(3) Very little of what is taught in education classes in college has any utility whatever for any purpose other than gathering "credentials".

(4) The "credential" system for teachers has absolutely no value in predicting who is or is not a good teacher, and the "qualification" system is more concerned with preserving the jobs of those who teach teachers than with anything of any value whatever to improving education.

(5) The best thing science and math teachers can study to improve their teaching ability is more math and science; confidence in one's knowledge of the material makes for a better teacher. Even so, there will be mathematics and science experts who simply can't teach. They're fairly easy to detect, and can either be retrained or not: that too is either fairly easy or impossible.

(6) The entire system is designed to protect bad teachers and preserve their jobs; it is the Iron Law in action in spades with Big Casino.

If you have not seen my previous notes on this subject (from last week) they are here.

I am sure the other reason Tiffany didn't consider the US as a location for their diamond cutting factory is the US financial and regulatory environment; perhaps that's more important than education systems. But for whatever reason, there won't be high skill jobs for Tiffany for America. You can still have breakfast outside the store, though.

And see mail

More on these remarkable performers

2009-10-26T14:30:20-06:00

Thanks to James Keech and many others:

Jump Rope Team

The amazing young ladies are apparently all in the 4th to 8th grade in Ohio.

http://kingsfirecrackers.blogspot.com/

The best video so far this year:

2009-10-26T14:30:17-06:00

First a lighter moment. This is the most astonishing video I have seen this year:

Something to shake up even the most blas�

http://www.bookwormroom.com/2009/10/21/
something-to-shake-up-even-the-most-blase/

"The fun here isn’t just in watching an amazing performance by girls and young women. Instead, part of the pleasure is watching a jaded audience of young men at an Army-Navy game go from polite cheers to foot-stomping roars of approval:"

I can't recall ever being so impressed at a performance group at a show at a sports event. I can't see how the game could compete.

Graves

I'm not sure who the girls were. They are too young to be cadets or midshipmen. They are certainly impressive. It turns out they are 4 - 8th grade in an Ohio school district.

Net Neutrality

2009-10-26T14:30:14-06:00

I note that in today's Wall Street Journal there are articles about ISP's and net neutrality: either they can treat large downloads such as Bit Torrent in a different manner from email, or they will have to start charging by use, ending the "all you can eat" fee structure. I recall that "all you can eat" was one of the factors that killed GE Genie, which used the GE corporate computers as net chat servers. Once they instigated unlimited messaging they were overwhelmed, and GE was faced with the choice of buying equipment dedicated to Genie, or letting Genie languish. They chose not to become the first AOL or Yahoo. So it goes.

I recommend today's article "Carriers Eye Pay-As-You-Go Internet."

The major thing you learn in economics 101 is the shape of a demand curve: the lower the price, the higher the demand for nearly any good. Certainly there are some saturation points, but in general the demand for a good goes up quite a lot as the price drops toward zero, and the theoretical demand for a free good is infinite. One can learn a lot from simply considering demand curves. Alas, not many ever think about them.

More on the Afghan trap; why this is important

2009-10-26T14:30:13-06:00

The LA Times article on Afghanistan which I recommended is now available at
<http://www.latimes.com/news/
opinion/commentary/la-oe-dorrons
oro20-2009oct20,0,2650413.story> and I continue to recommend it. It's important to understand the conditions in Afghanistan, and to understand that if we commit to stay there we are committing for a long time in dedication to a task that may well be impossible. The Pushtan tribesmen do not want us any more than they wanted the British Raj -- or Alexander the Great's Hellenistic/Persian civilization. Islam changed the tribesmen but not so much that they politically submitted to the Muslim conquests.

The Afghan Trap

2009-10-26T14:30:09-06:00

The point of The Afghan Trap article I wanted to call to your attention is that Afghans, and particularly Pushtans, are (1) polite, and (2) really and truly hate armed foreigners on their territory. This is an historical observation that I think is verifiable by nearly every report of the past two thousand years. If it's true, and I think it is, it bodes ill for the US efforts to remake Afghanistan into a modern stable liberal democracy. If you an find it, it's in today's LA Times: The Afghan Trap by Dorronsoro on today's (October 20, 2009) op-ed page is worth your attention. [It is now available at

<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion
/commentary/la-oe-dorronsoro20-2009oct20,
0,2650413.story> ]

We really do have to figure out just what we want in Afghanistan -- and whether our wishes have any chance whatever of fulfillment. In my judgment, our wants are irrelevant. We are not going to build a liberal democracy in Afghanistan; it will take longer and cost more than this nation is willing to invest. We are not going to have stable Western armed enclaves in Afghanistan. That can be done, but won't be very useful, and will be costly over long periods of time -- again something that this nation is nearly incapable of.

That inability, by the way, has been true for a very long time. Lee's greatest strategic mistake was to take the war to the North. Had he continued a strategy of defensive maneuver, politics in the North would very likely have ended the War Between the States by 1865 with a truce of exhaustion leading to a negotiated peace.

Democracies have never been much good at long term costly strategies and deferred rewards. It was only by the Grace of God that we managed to end the Seventy Years War with Communism without holocaust. Even so it was costly: see the Hungarian Uprising, Prague Spring, the Berlin Wall, the Killing Fields, the Reeducation Camps, Boat People, the long ordeal of Eastern Europe, etc. It was less costly for Europe than the Thirty Years War ending in the Peace of Exhaustion Signed at Westphalia in 1648 (the overthrow of the Peace of Westphalia was one of Hitler's most popular objectives), but costly enough, and it was often a near thing, with the Cold Warriors constantly taxed to give the Liberals more and more concessions in return for the wherewithal to continue Containment.

Containing Afghanistan is simple. Leave, with warning that we are going, taking with us those doomed allies to whom we have sworn protection (it's probably too late to build them an enclave, and they don't want that anyway). Afghanistan for the Afghans, meaning tribes and warlords with Pushtan domination around Kabul. We can try to shore up an anti-Taliban faction in Kabul. That might even work. But do it from afar. The strategy of counter-insurgency would work if we could actually commit to two generations of doing it, feeding a squad a month into the meatgrinder and disrupting a lot of American families for two generations here; but we aren't going to do that, and blood and treasure poured into Afghanistan is likely poured into, well, not sand, but the Ford of Kabul River.

Kabul town's by Kabul river --
Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
There I lef' my mate for ever,
Wet an' drippin' by the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
There's the river up and brimmin', an' there's 'arf a squadron swimmin'
'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.

Kabul town's a blasted place --
Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
'Strewth I sha'n't forget 'is face
Wet an' drippin' by the ford!
Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
Keep the crossing-stakes beside you, an' they will surely guide you
'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.

Kabul town is sun and dust --
Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
I'd ha' sooner drownded fust
'Stead of 'im beside the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
You can 'ear the 'orses threshin', you can 'ear the men a-splashin',
'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.

Kabul town was ours to take --
Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
I'd ha' left it for 'is sake --
'Im that left me by the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
It's none so bloomin' dry there; ain't you never comin' nigh there,
'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark?

Kabul town'll go to hell --
Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
'Fore I see him 'live an' well --
'Im the best beside the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
Gawd 'elp 'em if they blunder, for their boots'll pull 'em under,
By the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.

Turn your 'orse from Kabul town --
Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
'Im an' 'arf my troop is down,
Down an' drownded by the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river,
Ford o' Kabul river in the dark!
There's the river low an' fallin', but it ain't no use o' callin'
'Cross the ford o' Kabul river in the dark.

Rudyard Kipling

If I seem ambiguous, of course I am. We have sent the Legions to Afghanistan and Iraq. They want to achieve the objectives we have given them. Bringing home a defeated army is never a good thing for a republic. We sent the troops, and we have no right to demand that they throw their honor on the ground as they withdraw.

Once again we search for Peace with Honor. Nixon achieved that in Viet Nam, but he had promised South Viet Nam security against outside invasion: counter insurgency was their problem. They achieved internal security, and had at least a democratic a society in South Viet Nam as anyone in the region with few exceptions; but Nixon could not keep his promise after the Watergate scandals, and we all saw the shameful scenes in which we abandoned out erstwhile allies to the tender mercies of the northern invaders.

The worst of it all is that some of use saw the upcoming end in Iraq before we ever went in. Our original commitment in Afghanistan was not the same as the obligation we assumed in Iraq. We could have gone in, expelled the Taliban, and got out, leaving Afghanistan to the Afghans (which is to say to the warlords in the hills, Pushtans around Kabul, and Taliban in a few areas). We didn't, and getting out -- peace with honor -- is more difficult now. I wish Obama well in finding a path to peace with honor. (and see below)

Burnham's Machiavellians

2009-10-26T14:30:07-06:00

As an aside: in my judgment Burnham's The Machiavellians is on my reading list of works essential for educated people. Alas, it seems to be hard to find. There is an inadequate summary at
http://www.marxists.org/archive/
mattick-paul/1943/machiavellians.htm , inadequate in part because Burnham's work is itself a summary of seminal works by others including Pareto. One cannot expect every educated person to read Pareto, but the Burnham summary is quite good; the summary of the summary, a pr�cis, is better than nothing but still inadequate.

You can find a copy of Burnham's book at
http://committeeofpublicsafety.wordpress.com/
2009/05/01/the-machiavellians-principle-i/ . The download link leads to a very large pdf file that will take some minutes to download; be patient if you choose it. It can then be saved or printed. It's a pdf of the paperback publication, not pleasant to read but readable on any pdf reader including Kindle and the Sony Reader. I suppose this should lead to an essay on copyright, but I have mixed emotions about classic works that have fallen out of print yet ought to be available, and I don't feel up to that essay. I do think people ought to read Burnham's book.

Modern Academia no longer takes serious discussions of Marxism seriously. Many academics merely act as if the debate is over, and Marx was right about a lot, and wrong about some things, but it's not important to determine which parts are which. Indeed, theories of history and social progress are not much discussed any longer. I meet fewer and fewer people who have any idea of what Marx and Trotsky actually said, much less Schumpeter, and while some academics pretend to know, they don't seem actually to have read the books. The modern generation is action-oriented and content to pretend that most of the great social questions have been settled, as for example the "right" of everyone to health care; some are startled when I point out that this really means an obligation for everyone to pay someone else's medical bills but not their own. Perhaps we have this obligation, but it is not easy to determine from when it comes. If it's purely pragmatic: that some kind of centrally imposed health care scheme will proved more and cost less and thus bring the greatest good to the greatest number, one might suppose more debate on that subject since the evidence seems contradictory; and if there is some other underlying principle of right and obligation, perhaps that ought to be stated?

Regarding the pragmatic theory, I again refer you to
http://www.allbusiness.com/government/
elections-politics-politics-political-parties/
13239542-1.html for some data points on Swiss health care experience; note that Switzerland is small, almost universally literate, and mostly of the "protestant ethic" persuasion that one ought to work and free-loading is simply not done. The Swiss experience shows that demand curves work: the cheaper the good, the more will be consumed. The French and Swiss experiences of universal health care seem very relevant to the US debates, but I rarely hear them cited in our discussions. There will be more health care discussion in mail later today.

Saturday Mail Roundup 2

2009-10-26T01:10:07-06:00

Rainforest similar to ours flourished at 3-5� hotter

2009-10-26T01:10:05-06:00

Rainforest similar to ours flourished at 3-5� hotter

Alas…the lack of diversity will probably trigger hue and cry from the far left…. J

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/
2009/10/13/paleocene_hot_jungles_were_ok/

Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming

Rainforest similar to ours flourished at 3-5� hotter

By Lewis Page

Posted in Environment, 13th October 2009 12:35 GMT

Fossil boffins say that dense triple-canopy rainforests, home among other things to gigantic one-tonne boa constrictors, flourished millions of years ago in temperatures 3-5�C warmer than those seen today - as hot as some of the more dire global-warming projections.

Just like a modern jungle. Except with bloody enormous snakes.

The new fossil evidence comes from the Cerrej�n coal mine in Colombia, previously the location where the remains of the gigantic 40-foot Titanoboa cerrejonensis were discovered ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/
2009/02/05/mega_snake_liked_it_hot/ ). The snake's discoverers attracted flak from global-warming worriers at the time for saying that the cold-blooded creature would only have been able to survive in jungles a good bit hotter than Colombia's now are.

But now, according to further diggings, there is more evidence to support the idea that a proper rainforest similar to those now seen in the tropics existed at the time of the Titanoboa - despite the much hotter temperatures. This could be seen as conflicting with the idea that a rise of more than two or three degrees would kill off today's jungles with devastating consequences for the global ecosystem of which we are all part. <snip>

Tracy Walters, CISSP

Did someone actually pay for this study?

2009-10-26T01:10:04-06:00

Did someone actually pay for this study?

My first thought was ‘Did someone actually pay for this study?’ But it does point out that someone with an extreme view will do ANYTHING … lie, shout down, demean, whatever…to convince others that their view is correct. Those who yell loudest and most often are the ones people hear.

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/22/anti_extremist_extremism/

Prof: Extremists tend to dominate debates

We must silence these evil lunatics immediately!

By Lewis Page

Posted in Science, 22nd October 2009 14:14 GMT

Psychologists in America have revealed a shock insight from a recently-announced study: people with extreme or "deviant" views are much more willing to share their opinions than those with moderate ideas. This is thought to lead groups or communities actually composed mainly of moderates to acquire an extreme character.

The study in question was carried out by trick-cyclists Kimberly Rios Morrison of Ohio State and Dale T Miller of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

The example of "extremism" or "deviance" identified by the two profs in their experiments was a belief that students should be allowed to drink alcohol in the common areas of their dormitory accommodation. This is forbidden at Stanford, and those who strongly disagree with the rule were also those most likely to say so.

According to the psychologists, this was because they believed that the rest of the student body was on their side.

“Students who were stridently pro-alcohol tended to think that their opinion was much more popular than it actually was,” says Morrison. <snip>

Tracy Walters, CISSP

Global Warming Enthusiasts come to mind.

'Hunting has been banned in parts of Austria after freak storms with tennis...

2009-10-26T01:10:03-06:00

'Hunting has been banned in parts of Austria after freak storms with tennis ball-sized hailstones killed up to 90 per cent of the wild game population.'

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
worldnews/europe/austria/6377192
/Hunting-banned-in-parts-of-Austria-
after-hailstones-kill-90pc-of-wild-game.html >

---- Roland Dobbins

Curiouser and curiouser...

The good news is that the pledge drive is over for the quarter (which doesn't...

2009-10-26T01:00:02-06:00

The good news is that the pledge drive is over for the quarter (which doesn't mean that I won't from time to time remind you that this place operates on the public radio model) and was successful: we'll stay open. Better news is that my hideous cold/flu is better.

But I have pretty well taken the weekend off.

I took the day off.

2009-10-26T01:10:08-06:00

I took the day off.

"Clearly, their objective with those people was to terrify them first...

2009-10-26T01:10:06-06:00

"Clearly, their objective with those people was to terrify them first and embarrass them second."

<http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=8776841>

Roland Dobbins

The advertising campaign from Hell...

Ultracapacitors Make City Buses Cheaper, Greener

2009-10-26T01:10:02-06:00

Ultracapacitors Make City Buses Cheaper, Greener

A fleet of 17 buses near Shanghai has been running on ultracapacitors for the past three years, and today that technology is coming to the Washington, DC, for a one-day demonstration.

http://www.physorg.com/news175355628.html

Bill Shields

The implications for nuclear power are obvious...

WSJ and Space-based Solar Powe

"A ground receiving station a mile in diameter could deliver about 1,000 megawatts--enough to power on average about 1,000 U.S. homes."

It's encouraging that the WSJ is taking an interest in space-based solar but not so encouraging that they quoted one megawatt for the power consumption of the average U.S. home.

Mike Johns

-- Mike Johns

Poor immigrant Latinas have healthy babies...

2009-10-26T01:10:01-06:00

Poor immigrant Latinas have healthy babies, but by age 2 or 3, their toddlers begin to lag behind white middle-class children in vocabulary, listening and problem-solving skills, according to two studies released Tuesday

http://www.latimes.com/news/
local/la-me-toddlers21-2009oct21,0,200059.story

The Times article is interesting. It purports to show this is a proof of the need for Head Start, but no study I know of can detect any difference between Head Start and non Head Start children 3 years after they have left the Head Start program; which is terrifyingly disappointing, because Head Start is one of those programs that would more than pay for itself if it worked. Me, I think Head Start ought to try to teach the kids to read, but the NEA is having none of that. Incidentally today's paper shows that most teachers don't think they learned much in their education classes in college, but that's another story.

This one is annoying: is there some simple cultural explanation? Like keeping orange juice in high lead content pitchers?

: Bill whittle today

2009-10-25T22:12:32-06:00

: Bill whittle today

Jerry,

I know you will like this one.

http://www.pjtv.com/video/
Afterburner_with_Bill_Whittle/
Warmongers_or_Peacemakers%3A_
Who_Will_Be_Responsible_for_
Scorching_the_Earth%3F/2591/

Phil

I forget just how little of modern history is taught in the schools, and how little generations later than mine know about "Peace with honor", appeasement, and the Road to War in the 1930's. Whittle gives a good overview. Superficial as it would have to be in that short a talk, but better than nothing.

ACORN

2009-10-25T22:12:31-06:00

ACORN

Jerry,

I’ve been following the continuing saga of the ACORN child prostitution scam story, with a new video (Philadelphia) up yesterday. The audio is mostly shut off, and it comes with a challenge to ACORN: You’re suing us for recording without permission. Will you give us permission to release the audio, so that people can hear if you were lying or not? Surely you have nothing to hide?

They (Breitbart + Fox News) did it before as well. They released the first video, waited for ACORN to say that there were a bunch of other cities where the scam had failed, then released videos of those other cities. Waited for ACORN to say that the partial videos had been doctored, then released the full unedited versions.

Good clean fun, of course. But also a new paradigm of The News. “I’ll decide when to release the news, and how much to release. I feel no obligation to tell you what I know. I am entirely partisan, my goal is to destroy ACORN; my releases will be timed toward that goal.”

Of course there have always been partisan news releases; think Dan Rather and the National Guard memos, timed to hurt George W Bush during the 2004 campaign. But I don’t recall a case where they said so. Fox News is pretty partisan (Obama’s people insist!), but they wouldn’t be able to get away with this. But they don’t control the timing of this story; Breitbart and his two young friends do.

mkr

Wednesday Mail Roundup 6

2009-10-25T22:12:27-06:00

This can't be said often enough

2009-10-25T22:12:26-06:00

This can't be said often enough

"The point of The Afghan Trap article I wanted to call to your attention is that Afghans, and particularly Pushtans, are (1) polite, and (2) really and truly hate armed foreigners on their territory. This is an historical observation that I think is verifiable by nearly every report of the past two thousand years. If it's true, and I think it is, it bodes ill for the US efforts to remake Afghanistan into a modern stable liberal democracy."

Some days reading the news is like living in a Flashman novel.

--Mike

The cost of treating the old

2009-10-25T22:12:25-06:00

The cost of treating the old

Dr. Pournelle,

Bo Anderson says that he "know[s] of no civilized country, especially those with socialized medicine, where care are [sic] withheld for the dying or elderly."

He is misinformed. He should have a look here: <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/
healthnews/6127514/
Sentenced-to-death-on-the-NHS.html>

Here's the money quote:

"Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can ... have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away. "

Note, fluid can be withdrawn. And food too; although it doesn't mention that in this article, there are many cases in the news where this has been done. So the inconvenient elderly are starved to death - with sedation, so it doesn't hurt. Maybe.

You don't need to look in the crystal ball, you can just read the newspapers.

Andrew Duffin

Terry Schaivo was killed by denying her liquids; she died of thirst. At one point a state trooper physically prevented her mother from giving her an ice cube. (He must be proud of doing his duty.) We like to believe that "she couldn't feel anything." Perhaps so; does an earthworm feel?

In theory this was her own wish as testified by her husband (then living with another woman and their children), but the costs of keeping Schaivo alive almost certainly figured in his initial (and long delayed) decision to turn her off. If the state is going to allow someone to die of thirst, it would seem a bit more humane simply to increase the morphine dosage, but apparently that is illegal because of the danger of addiction to narcotics.

Healthcare

My take on healthcare, as an independent small business owner, is that I can no longer afford health insurance until I get to Medicare age. Up until this year I have always carried a policy, but when the last round of cost increases came around, I took a long hard look at the policy I was able to supposedly "afford" and found it so full of loopholes as to be worthless. If I paid it, I would end up going bankrupt from the premiums. If I stopped the policy I would have at least a fighting chance of staying solvent until 65. So I join the ranks of the uninsured. There IS a crisis, as far as I am concerned.

When I hear of "penalties" for not having insurance through a private company, I hear the worst of capitalist socialism. I guess they might just have to cart me off to debtors prison, but I believe that any "penalty" would be as unconstitutional as a poll tax and any enforcement would be struck down by almost any Supreme Court.

My thoughts on what would work is a national standard policy with a $1000 per year deductible, fixed rate for everyone no matter age,sex, physical condition, $3,000,000 to $5,000,000 lifetime cap (with inflation adjustments), and co-pays on ALL procedures. There would be BY LAW no other competing policies or group insurance in this range. Insurance companies could vie for covering the first $1,000, deductables, and amounts over the lifetime cap ONLY. No government entity, business, military organization, or any other group could negotiate for lower rates or compete on the basic policy. From the President on down, every legal citizen would have this basic coverage.

How would it be paid? Simple. The real beneficiary of a nation full of people in good health is the economic engine of that nation. Premiums would not be paid by individuals (other than co-pays and deductibles) but by tariffs on goods entering or exiting the country. That takes the burden off of ALL business owners, and directly links a cause and effect.

FWIW, The ancient Greeks on one island had a well respected Kean Code for people living on the island. If they reached age 60, they were required to drink Hemlock. A rather famous poet of the age slipped out to Athens, where he lived to 90. Also, during WWII in the south Pacific, there was a tribe of headhunters who would bury their old and disabled up to the neck in sand, and leave them so that they could die. The cultural imperative was so strong that even after being introduced to Western culture, many of them demanded to be allowed to die that way. Both of these oddities were reported in the late 1940s National Geographics. I bring this up to point out that the issue of healthcare costs to society are not new, and have been dealt with in extreme ways in the past with full general agreement of the population. Now if we could just require all politicians to take Hemlock after two terms in office...

While in Sparta, if you lived long enough you automatically became a Senator. Of course being a Spartan man was somewhat dangerous...

What is old! -

My son once asked me when I would be "old". He was in his very early twenties so old enough to understand the words but not "get" my answer: "Old age receeds exactly as fast as I have birthdays." He couldn't imagine being thirty, much less in his middle forties, (as I was then.) But he is now in his mid-twenties and the father of two children...he is starting to get it.

I think of the Logan's Run answer, (In the book the age was much younger, 21?) I think about the Eskimo leaving grandma on the ice. Of the two solutions to old and a drag on the system, I prefer the Eskimo solution. The family and the old one decided when it was time. However, our culture seems to fear being old, infirm, and dying. My mother chose to not fight her final illness in spite of the urging of the doctors. Her cancer, at best, would give her a couple of very painful years bought at the cost of frequent and painful surgery. You pretty well had to catch this one before you had symptoms to have any hope of even five more years. Cost wasn't an issue. My father's varied life circumstances left him with three insurances, what one didn't pay for the others would. He never received anything more than an itemization, no bills. My mother went through one surgery and found out that they were not quite truthful about the pain.

My mother chose and we consented.

We actually had to intervene several times. Hospice was not the right place as they couldn't keep her on the IV meds that kept her comfortable. She couldn't reliably swallow, but one of the doctors was such a proponent of a particular hospice care home that we had orders in her record, at the nurses station, and kept a family member around just to keep her from being moved. He was later found to have more than a casual relationship with that home. Sometimes we had to gently remind the doctor about to examine her that nothing he did would actually help her, did we have to move her? We also had to convince the nursing staff, once she was unable to vocalize, that she was, (or was not ,) in pain. (Mostly she seemed a bit PO'd about having to die just when she had her life set up just how she wanted it.) Eventually her nurses learned what we knew...certain things were just my mother trying to communicate with us, and others indicated pain. I was glad my mother had the hospital for she needed far more care than we could give her at home, but I was glad we were a part of her care.

I was very glad for the pallative care.

So, we still used a lot of resources in my mother's last year. Not as many as they wanted to give her. I am deeply in favor of giving anyone and everyone pallitave care when they get to the end. But when should we withdraw active treatment? Who decides and who pays? (There is an old saying about the one who pays the piper calling the tune.)

I know some folks would spend everything to keep grandma alive. I know that I am not too likely to live to be very old. I appreciate that you are still kicking around, Jerry, but if your care put a great financial burden on your wife and finances after you passed, would you choose the treatment?

I don't know how to educate people to accept an inevitable end and choose pallitave care over active surgeries and the like. But, if the culture accepts that there is a point, past which no medicine will really save their loved one, and the few years...good or not, may not be worth it over all...How do we choose?

In previous times it didn't much matter. The medicine wouldn't much save you anyway. I guess we are the victims of our own medical successes? I know I could not look at a poor someone and let them end out their life in screaming pain. I think that is where the idea of medical care for everyone, without really thinking that you are forcing others to pay for it, started out.

I know that if I lose my medical insurance, or possibly if I fall into a limited category in some future national plan, that I will die much sooner and in much pain. I accept that all people will die. But don't want to before I am kinda done with what I want to do. Yet, I don't really control it. Maybe that also is a source of this debate: the illusion of control.

This is wandering around, so I definitely won't feel bad when you delete this half-way through. I just don't see easy answers. Because Medicare helped pay for your insurance, Jerry, you lived. Because I had insurance, I live. My mother couldn't be saved by any insurance and had the wisdom to see it. How do these things translate into public policy?

NERVA and ROVER

2009-10-25T22:12:24-06:00

NERVA and ROVER

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Here is an interesting technical article on Rover and NERVA, Nuclear Thermal Rockets, examining their feasibility today based on the original programs some forty years ago.

http://www.aerospaceamerica.org/
Documents/Augustine%20Commission%
20Reports/Rover_NERVA.pdf

"The highly successful Rover & NERVA programs were terminated in 1973 because the Mars and Lunar missions, for which their proven technology was so beneficial, had been deferred indefinitely."

We could have a hundred thousand lbf, 900 Isp Nuclear Thermal Rocket engine flight ready in seven years. Overall mass of a manned planetary mission would be reduced by a factor of twenty five with such an engine.

The maddening thought: We could have had that engine in 1980, and have been using it for the past three decades. We could have had a permanent manned lunar base these past twenty five years, and the first generation of off-world humans would just about now be finishing grammar school.

Instead we have streaming video of foul mouthed urchins, Twitter. "Information Wants To Be Free!": and imperial wars without end the better to grab the last of the oil. If in 1970 you had written this future as a novel, we would have laughed at you. After all, surely we would never be such fools, now, would we?!.

Petronius

I was Barry Goldwater, Jr.'s first campaign manager, and after Barry was in Congress he worked to keep the NERVA program going. He managed for a few years, but it was eventually zeroed out. We got a tested 800 ISP at one point. NERVA is the propulsion system in wide use in my novel Exile to Glory (now available with other stories in that civilization from Baen as Exile -- And Glory! It's still a good read, if I do say so.

Global Warming and the Courts

2009-10-25T22:12:23-06:00

Global Warming and the Courts

Dr. Pournelle --

This from the WSJ Law Blog:

Hurricane Katrina Victims Have Standing To Sue Over Global Warming

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/10/19/
hurricane-katrina-victims-have-standing-
to-sue-over-global-warming/

"The suit was brought by landowners in Mississippi, who claim that oil and coal companies emitted greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming that, in turn, caused a rise in sea levels, adding to Hurricane Katrina’s ferocity."

"The central question before the Fifth Circuit was whether the plaintiffs had standing, or whether they could demonstrate that their injuries were “fairly traceable” to the defendant’s actions. The defendants predictably assert that the link is “too attenuated.”

But the Fifth Circuit held that at this preliminary stage in the litigation, the plaintiffs had sufficiently detailed their claims to earn a day in court. "

First the politicians pronounce on the science and now the courts are involved. People on both sides of AGW are looking forward to this case going to trial but I'm afraid little good can come of it, regardless of the outcome.

Pieter

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/20/antarctic_ice_loss_overestimated/

West Antarctic ice loss overestimated by NASA sats

Incorrect allowance made for trampoline-like bedrock

By Lewis Page <http://forms.theregister.co.uk/
mail_author/?story_url=/2009/10/20/
antarctic_ice_loss_overestimated/>

20th October 2009 10:10 GMT

Scientists using a network of ground sensors emplaced in Antarctica say that NASA satellites have overestimated the amount of ice that is melting and running off into the ocean from the polar continent.

The new results come from the West Antarctic GPS Network (WAGN), which uses 18 locator stations "bolted to bedrock outcrops" in the Western antarctic to discover "ground truth" regarding the phenomenon of "postglacial rebound", where the bedrock lifts as the mile-thick ice sheet atop it diminishes.

Postglacial rebound is important, as NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites estimate ice loss by measuring regional gravitational forces as they fly overhead. Both ice loss and bedrock rebound contribute to GRACE grav-scan readings, and according to the WAGN measurements, rebound figures used to estimate ice loss have now been shown to be wrong.

"The take home message is that Antarctica is contributing to rising sea levels. It is the rate that is unclear," says Ian Dalziel, lead investigator for WAGN.

The WAGN boffins say they are sure that recent figures for ice loss calculated from GRACE readings have been overestimated, but they are not yet sure by how much. However, they say that there is no dispute about the fact that ice is disappearing from the antarctic sheet - this process has been underway for 20,000 years, since the thickness peaked during the last "glacial maximum".

"The published results are very important because they provide precise, ground-truth GPS observations of the actual rebound of the continent," said Vladimir Papitashvili of the Antarctic Earth Sciences Program at the National Science Foundation, which supported the research.

This is your standard Pledge Week nag. This site operates by the Public Radio...

2009-10-25T22:12:22-06:00

This is your standard Pledge Week nag. This site operates by the Public Radio model: it's free, but unless we get enough subscribers it can't continue. This week the goal is for new subscribers, but I do thank all those who recently renewed. Now on to the mail.

Jerry,

2009-10-25T22:12:21-06:00

Jerry,

Shades of Larry Niven and John Cramer...

http://www.foxnews.com/story
/0,2933,568528,00.html?test=latestnews

Jim

Plausible as any I guess.

One trusted reader comments :

Words fail me

Continuing with its tradition of bringing us news no other network will touch…

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,568528,00.html

Ron Morse

Me, I'm glad they do such stories. Of course I'm a Niven fan... (And do note that the story first appeared in the New York Times)

Comment on all the above"

2009-10-25T22:12:20-06:00

Comment on all the above"

My apologies to all for including so much, but it's hard to be selective: once we concede that health care is an entitlement, the implementation becomes very highly complex. Another reason to go slowly and incrementally, I would think, but apparently that argument has not been overly persuasive.

The cry seems to be "do something and do it now, even if it's wrong." Sometimes that's the case: a ship being blown ashore may drop anchor or raise sails and try to claw off shore; either may work, either may fail, but doing nothing (or doing both) will inevitably fail. I think it obvious that we are not in that kind of crisis with healthcare.

KUSC Pledge Drive

2009-10-25T22:12:17-06:00

KUSC Pledge Drive

Jerry,

You wrote:

"Anyway, this is one of those nagging reminders. I won't spend as much time on that as KUSC does every ten minutes. You have been nagged. Thanks to all those who have recently subscribed or renewed."

It wouldn't be a bother with a nag every 10 days or once a month. I have you in my queue to resubscribe in January.

I like having you around on the web. You bring a note of sanity in these "Crazy Years."

Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Thanks

Microsoft Security Essentials - Week One -

2009-10-25T22:12:16-06:00

Microsoft Security Essentials - Week One -

Full story:

http://blogs.technet.com/mmpc/
archive/2009/10/15/microsoft-security
-essentials-week-one.aspx

Microsoft Security Essentials – Week One

Now that Microsoft Security Essentials <http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/> is generally available to consumers in 19 countries, we've had a chance to go over the data, and there are some very interesting results. Just in the first week we saw well over 1.5 million downloads of Microsoft Security Essentials, but the price (free to Windows users) is hard to beat!

Computers reporting detections up to October 6: almost four million detections on 535,752 distinct machines. The detections are eight times the machine count because many computers are infected with multiple threats.

Microsoft Security Essentials is available in 8 languages and 19 markets at RTM, which covers a lot of the PC using world. The geographic distribution of detections so far still closely follows the Microsoft Security Essentials Beta countries, and is ramping up in other countries that use the 8 languages.

http://www.microsoft.com/security/
portal/blog-images/msetelm3.png

Looking at counts of computers reporting detections by threat categories, we see that the order is different in each of the top three countries. Trojans are the top detected category in the US, China has lots of potentially unwanted software threats, and worms (particularly Conficker) are very active in Brazil. There are also many exploits being encountered in China, which may mean these PCs do not have the latest security updates.

…

Tracy Walters, CISSP

Fake 'Conficker.B Infection Alert' spam campaign drops scareware

2009-10-25T22:12:15-06:00

Fake 'Conficker.B Infection Alert' spam campaign drops scareware

Whereas the theme remains the same, the botnet masters have slightly modified the message:

“Dear Microsoft Customer,

Starting 18/10/2009 the ‘Conficker’ worm began infecting Microsoft customers unusually rapidly. Microsoft has been advised by your Internet provider that your network is infected. To counteract further spread we advise removing the infection using an antispyware program. We are supplying all effected Windows Users with a free system scan in order to clean any files infected by the virus.

Please install attached file to start the scan. The process takes under a minute and will prevent your files from being compromised. We appreciate your prompt cooperation.

Regards, Microsoft Windows Agent #2 (Hollis) Microsoft Windows Computer Safety Division”

The use of email as propagation vector for scareware campaigns (The ultimate guide to scareware protection <http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=4297> ), and in particular the use of email attachments is an uncommon practice, compared to the single most effective way of hijacking traffic through blackhat search engine optimization where the cybercriminals rely on real-time news events.

The campaign is an example of a -- thankfully - badly executed one in the sense that with Microsoft’s Security Essentials recently gained momentum <http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=4512> , even the average Internet user would notice the suspicious timing of the offered “antispyware program”.

Tracy Walters, CISSP

As always, be careful out there.

Scrivener

2009-10-25T22:12:14-06:00

Scrivener

Jerry,

I've seen you comment on Scrivener more than once and I read this at Macworld.com this morning. Thought you may be interested - looks like a fairly long trial deal and some discounts

cheers....

http://www.literatureandlatte.com/
nanowrimo.html

Richard Hakala

My experience with Scrivener is that if I worked solo and liked having complex project creation tools, I would like this; but in fact I find that OneNote or some such plus a good text creation editor that does spell checking and autocorrecting of the many typing mistakes I make is all I need. My habits are pretty firmly in place now.

That is not to say that I don't recommend those still looking for tools to try Scrivener. I know several successful writers who use it. I do point that if you do much collaborative writing, you'll want to talk this over with your partners.

File under you've got to be kidding ...

2009-10-25T22:12:13-06:00

File under you've got to be kidding ...

Fifth Circuit grants Katrina victims standing in global warming class action suit via US Legal News - JURIST by on 10/20/09

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit [official website] has ruled [opinion, PDF] that 14 victims of Hurricane Katrina [JURIST news archive] have standing to sue companies for allegedly contributing to global warming [JURIST news archive], which they claim played a role in increasing the severity of the hurricane. The court found Friday that the plaintiffs had presented enough

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/
2009/10/fifth-circuit-grants-katrina-victims.php

Bill Shields

Incredible

Monday Mail Roundup 2

2009-10-25T22:12:12-06:00

One in Ten in UK have experienced ID Fraud

2009-10-25T22:12:09-06:00

One in Ten in UK have experienced ID Fraud

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/12/id_fraud_prevention_week/

ID fraud prevention week fights UK's fastest growing crime

Oo are yer?

By John Leyden

Posted in ID, 12th October 2009 11:54 GMT

National Identity Fraud Prevention week http://www.stop-idfraud.co.uk kicked off in the UK on Monday. The scheme marks an attempt to raise public awareness of the threat of identity fraud, reckoned to be one of the UK's fastest growing financial crimes.

One in ten Brits have already been a victim of identity fraud scams, which involve crooks impersonating victims and establishing fraudulent lines of credit. Businesses can also be fraudulently impersonating in much the same way.

As well as leaving victims out of pocket, the crime can damage their credit ratings. Identity fraud costs the UK economy approximately �1.2bn every year, according to stats from the UK Identity Fraud Steering Committee.

Cifas, the UK's fraud prevention service, reports http://www.cifas.org.uk/default.asp?edit_id=932-57 more than 59,000 victims of impersonation have been recorded in the first nine months of 2009 - a 36 per cent increase from the same period last year. More than half the account takeovers recorded affected victims' credit card accounts.

Meanwhile, mobile phone takeovers have more than doubled from last year.

For consumers, guarding against ID fraud involves practicing safe computing (eg running up-to-date antivirus software) as well as being careful about destroying financially sensitive information, such as bank statements. Business and government also have a role to play..<snip>

Tracy Walters, CISSP

Be careful out there.

Casimir Effect studied by DARPA

2009-10-25T22:12:30-06:00

DARPA and Vacuum Energy

Jerry,

DARPA is looking at vacuum energy with the Casmir Effect

<http://www.scientificamerican.com/
article.cfm?id=darpa-casimir-effect-r esearch>

Research in a Vacuum: DARPA Tries to Tap Elusive Casimir Effect for Breakthrough Technology DARPA mainly hopes that research on this quantum quirk can produce futuristic microdevices By Adam Marcus

"Named for a Dutch physicist, the Casimir effect governs interactions of matter with the energy that is present in a vacuum. Success in harnessing this force could someday help researchers develop low-friction ballistics and even levitating objects that defy gravity. For now, the U.S. Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched a two-year, $10-million project encouraging scientists to work on ways to manipulate this quirk of quantum electrodynamics."

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

I know very little about the potential of practical applications of the Casimir Effect, but from what I do know I applaud investigations of this type.

Power satellites in the Wall Street Journal

Jerry:

Found this in today's Wall Street Journal -- Five Technologies That Could Change Everything.

............Karl Lembke

<http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB20001424052748703746604574
461342682276898.html>

SPACE-BASED SOLAR POWER

For more than three decades, visionaries have imagined tapping solar power where the sun always shines--in space. If we could place giant solar panels in orbit around the Earth, and beam even a fraction of the available energy back to Earth, they could deliver nonstop electricity to any place on the planet.

The technology may sound like science fiction, but it's simple: Solar panels in orbit about 22,000 miles up beam energy in the form of microwaves to earth, where it's turned into electricity and plugged into the grid. (The low-powered beams are considered safe.) A ground receiving station a mile in diameter could deliver about 1,000 megawatts--enough to power on average about 1,000 U.S. homes.

The cost of sending solar collectors into space is the biggest obstacle, so it's necessary to design a system lightweight enough to require only a few launches. A handful of countries and companies aim to deliver space-based power as early as a decade from now.

Stewart Nozette indicted for attempted espionage

2009-10-25T22:12:29-06:00

Top NASA scientist busted for leaking satellite intel

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/20/nasa_security/

Top NASA scientist busted for leaking satellite intel

Key networks not secured

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco

Posted in Crime, 20th October 2009 17:51 GMT

A former NASA scientist who helped discover evidence of water on the moon has been arrested on charges he tried to sell Israel classified information about US military satellite systems.

Stewart Nozette, 52, of Maryland, was arrested in a sting in which an FBI agent posed as an Israeli intelligence officer. According to federal prosecutors, he demanded money and a new Israeli passport in exchange for the sensitive information, which he obtained while working with a high security clearance for the US space agency. <snip>

Tracy Walters

I have known Stewart for a long time, and I have always considered him a friend. I haven't had any contact I remember since the days of Clementine, the SDI-derived experiment that indicated the presence of water ice on the Moon. [corrected; original said Columbine. sorry.]

I also found this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2009/10/22/AR2009102202767.html

which is curious, since it appears to be an account of entrapment. I say appears to be: I have no information not easily available on line. I would have thought Stewart intelligent enough to take more precautions; and I do not remember any particular Israeli fervor in the dozen years I knew him. It's an odd story. More if I learn more.

[For considerably more see view]

Sunspots and Earth Climate

2009-10-25T22:12:28-06:00

Another low sunspot level problem -

Global cooling may not be the only problem due to low sunspots. Looks like some electronics may also have reliability problems.

http://www.pldesignline.com/220301387;jsessionid=5LE3INEJBSTMBQE1GHPSKH4ATMY32JVN?pgno=1

Dan

A complex article mostly demonstrating just how little we know about the Earth/Solar interactions. Our Sun-worshipping ancestors would not be so much surprised. The modern members of the Scientism cult think we know far more about the Old Gods than we do.

If the source of your moral values is pragmatism, does it not make sense to find out what does and does not work?

Healthcare discussion continues

2009-10-25T22:12:19-06:00

Resuming the health care discussion (end health care discussion)

problems with the Swiss system

The key phrases I see in the Swiss health care system article you linked to today are:

1. The government proscribes what the policies will cover

2. the government sets the prices

Ye Gods! Of course it will eventually collapse.

Phil

It depends on the republic; some may be capable of self-discipline. Most are not. The Venetians lasted a long time, but they had a very complicated government structure built on the principle that no one was ever entirely trustworthy, and inefficiency was part of the price of freedom. But a bureaucracy of inquisitors and assassins kept in check by committees and councils makes for a very complex structure. Anyway they were unable to defend themselves against Napoleon carrying Liberty and Equality across Europe on the bayonets f French soldiers.

Subject: A health care discussion

> The reason costs go up for public healthcare is that the "minimum"
> advances to keep pace with the latest developments, no matter how
> expensive.

It's a lot simpler than that. The health industry is capitalistic, and as for-profit corporations with investors they would be culpably negligent not to have a range of offerings at price points 1%, 2%, 5%, 10% (and more!) beyond the current budget. To date, they have certainly satisfied their duty to their investors.

This fact, plus a little time examining the results of compounded growth, should tell you that at some point, you MUST decline to purchase something on their price list. And there will be human faces to go with that decision.

You can say that health care is a public service, and then have a panel make that decision. Or you can keep health insurance private, and keep raising the price until enough people have dropped off that you can afford to provide almost everything to those who are still with you (and the math says that this process must continue perpetually). In either case you will have a long and sad list of people who were not treated. So far as I can tell, this unhappy list must exist, and all we can try to do is make this list as sensible as possible.

Regarding actual payment, the article in The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care

is the most coherent description I've read for how capitalism might be reintroduced into health care.

Regards, Andy Valencia

Canada and the Iron Law

"The great transformation, in Canada as throughout the west since the Second World War, has been from the old arrangement in which a relatively small civil service served the people, under the direction of their elected government, to the new one in which the people exist chiefly to serve a civil service grown vastly too large for elected officials to oversee." -- David Warren http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=1059

It's not so much the nature of the parts as it is the number, size, and arrangement of those parts. Oxygen and chlorine are composed of the same parts, but differ in their number and arrangement. It is the number and arrangement that appear to matter.

Mike

In most western democracies the civil service is very similar to the old aristocracy, but instead of owning land they own government jobs, and the appointment is for life, not transferable by primo-geniture. But you couldn't fire your local Lord and you were well advised to be respectful... The US was an exception to this for a while, but is joining the ranks of modern western liberal democracy. It's part of growing up.

: Wall St terrified of health care issue

Dr. Pournelle,

I think Wall street is secretly terrified of the health care issue… Anyone else charting commodity prices vs. progress towards the President’s more expensive agendas? It’s a bit late to join in, but oil, gas, and precious metals are all rising. My worthless amateur guess is that people with a lot of money are betting heavily on either massive inflation or a market crash.

Sean

You think?

Health care

Dr. Pournelle,

I may be restating what has been said, but part of the problem with health care costs is that we're in a place that's maybe halfway to a goal. One hundred years ago, aspirin, appendectomies, and amputations plus childbirth and the occasional sutured wound were pretty much it.

In about 1950 or so, treatments began to get more effective--Leukemia was generally considered 6 weeks, 6 months, or 6 years from diagnosis to death depending on the form--sub-chronic, chronic, or acute. Diagnosis and treatment were palliative. By the 1970s there were remissions of enough length to be considered a cure.

In the early 80s, AIDS was a death sentence. By the '90s, there was a combination of drugs that could at least slow the progress of the disease and lengthen life by some years. Now, we're approaching the point where AIDS might be considered a dangerous but chronic condition, provided one has some means to pay for the treatment.

We couldn't do then what we can do now. If medical progress continues, in a century or so this debate may well seem quaint, because autodocs or something similar at the local pharmacy will handle everything that's in any way routine. Costs will level.

That's a big IF, though. I wonder what health care 'reform' will do to research funding. Even today, physicians who treat Medicare-eligible patients by using an 'unapproved' drug or procedure will not be allowed to treat Medicare patients for two years. This is true even if the patient isn't interested in Medicare or is willing to bet his life savings on the chance of a cure. (I verified this by asking a physician of my acquaintance.)

Anyone with the money will leave the country for treatment in Thailand or some such. I fear the heavy hand of government. Some years ago there was an article written by a pathologist (Discover magazine "Vital Signs" column) in which the pathologist told the oncologist that a patient had hairy-cell leukemia. The oncologist replied, "Oh, thank God" because an effective experimental chemotherapy had been developed; the treatment phase lasted about half a month, and most patients were either 'cured' or in very long term remission. The insurance company would not pay for this treatment, although it would pay for 'standard' chemotherapy--six months with no real chance of a cure. The hospital had some available funds, and the patient did recover.

I wonder how likely the government will be to give approval, and if approval is not given, will the government then give approval to allow a hospital to use donated funds? Will the government allow hospitals to receive donated funds? Will anyone have funds to donate after we've 'shared' with everyone else? I fear the only certainty in this mess is that we won't have anywhere near the freedom we once had.

On the other hand, this may solve the energy problem. Just put a pulley on the caskets of the Founding Fathers. They're spinning in their graves as is.

jomath

Health Care Costs

Jerry:

I was at the birthday party of a fellow LASFS member, and one of the people there mentioned her daughter's experience with health care costs.

She recently had a baby, by C-section. The incision got infected, and the doctor wound up prescribing a heavy-duty antibiotic for it. She took her prescription to the pharmacy, and was told Medicaid didn't cover that particular antibiotic for superficial injuries. If she wanted the pills, it would be something like $180.

Well, she didn't -=quite=- faint, nor did she laugh in the pharmacist's face at the notion that a C-section is a "superficial" wound. Not quite.

She did go back to her doctor, who discovered that if he prescribed the same drug, in tablets that were twice the strength, the price for filling the prescription dropped some 80% -- much easier to manage out of pocket.

My friend at the party cited this as evidence that we need a third party, preferably a government one, paying for all prescription medication.

My comment was a price discrepancy like that is the kind of thing you see only when the patient doesn't know, or care, what medicines cost, because a third party pays the bill. I guarantee, if people had to consider the price of their prescription drugs, you'd see a lot fewer price discrepancies like that. If the 125 mg tablet costs five times as much as the 250 mg tablet, I'd buy the 250 mg and use some of my savings on a pill cutter.

............Karl Lembke

Healthcare mandate

Dr. Pournelle,

One aspect of the healthcare sausage currently being made in Congress is a mandate that everyone _must_ have health insurance, with a fairly substantial fine for non-compliance. Under what provision of the Constitution is the federal government empowered to fine citizens for not purchasing health insurance? Should this not require a constitutional amendment, as with federal income tax?

Steve Chu

I have always thought that Federal drug laws require a Constitutional Amendment but no one seems to care. I am not at all sure how forbidding hashish was part of the Constitution. Or Marijuana.

Noonan On Obama Care

Jerry,

As always, Peggy Noonan is worth reading:

http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB1000142405274870432200457
4475551644400192.html

Best Regards,

Mark E. Horning, Physicist,

Agreed

Government payscales for doctors?

Jerry

Government pay scales for doctors? Well, the gov't already does that - augmented with bonuses to make the salaries attractive: back when I was a gov't doc our salaries could not be higher than that of Congress critters - without the free flights, free food at Congressional cafeterias, etc. But the general principle is the same.

But go'vt docs work 40 hours a week, not the 80 hours that private practice docs do. Overall, docs work 60 hours a week, so if they all go on salary we effectively lose one third of our doctor time.

Then there is the fact that clinics and offices will have to be paid-for by the gov't. Docs pay for them now, for the most part.

So simple, yes? Of course the politicians would decide when you need a new clinic, eh?

To Jerry Pournelle,

You wrote: "But one reason health care costs so much is this business of the last two years of life. If we could eliminate those two years we would no longer be spending more than others."

It's true that the last years are the most expensive, but I know of no civilized country, especially those with socialized medicine, where care are withheld for the dying or elderly. If you want to compare US health costs to costs in other countries, they both should include the cost of care in the last years, as no one is really arguing against it.

Trying to frame the US debate, on the issue of care to "grandma", seems disingenuous to me.

Regards

Bo Andersen, Denmark.

Does Denmark pay for all costs of end of life: feeding, respirators, intensive care, etc.? That is the usual way of limiting last year of life costs: just don't pay for extraordinary measures (which is sort of the same as assuming that everyone has opted for DNR). I am not really familiar with the policies of other countries in such matters, but I do note that their last year of life costs are far lower than those of the US. I do not know why.

I am also not well qualified to determine what are and are not "heroic" measures to prolong life, and of those which ought to be paid for by the public. I went through this before: we are not talking about the costs to families and estates. It's what the State ought to pay for that's up for discussion. How many revivals of Aunt Minnie to I owe her nephew Horace? (We are assuming that Aunt Minnie isn't cogniscent.)

Shocking news from India

2009-10-25T22:12:18-06:00

Medical records sent for computerisation to India up for sale

I can't believe this would surprise anyone because I have been expecting to see this sort of thing since data started getting shipped offshore. Of note, I believe the RNC and DNC offshored their member databases some years ago.

-LJK

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/
news/politics/nation/
Medical-records-sent-for-computerisation-to-India
-up-for-sale/articleshow/5137528.cms

NEW DELHI: In a development that is certain to lead to a hardening of stance on the outsourcing industry by the western world, investigations conducted by a British TV channel have come up with the stunning revelation that confidential medical records sent to India for computerisation are being offered for sale, triggering heightened concerns about breach of data security here.

The revelation has forced police of the two countries to join hands to launch an official investigation into the data pilferage of the records stored by the Indian BPOs. If found true, the allegations could hit the flourishing BPO sector in India hard, fuelling doubts about their integrity and efficiency.

There is already a substantial public opinion building in the western world about the viability of outsourcing jobs to the developing countries, primarily India. In the run-up to the presidential election in the US, Barack Obama had advocated lifting of tax breaks to the American companies who ship jobs abroad.

The health records-for-sale investigation is scheduled to be broadcast on ITV on its Tonight programme on Monday.

Sall Anne Poole, head of investigations at the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), confirmed that an official probe had been launched to get to the bottom of things. "We are very concerned that private patients' medical records are on sale in India. The ICO will establish the full facts and will then decide what action, if any, needs to be taken. Medical records are sensitive personal information and must be held securely," she said.

The modus-operandi employed to procure the records was simple. Chris Rogers, the programme's presenter, contacted two Indian salesmen through an internet chat room, and posed as a marketing executive keen on buying medical records to sell insurance and medicines.

Rogers bought 116 files with detailed medical records of British patients , from the two salesmen, whom the programme named as Jayesh Bagchandnani and Kunal Gargatti, the Daily Mail, a prominent British tabloid, reported on Sunday.

Bagchandnani reportedly said they came from staff at an Indian 'transcription' centre where medical records are computerised. Bagchandnani told Rogers: "We can do really good business with these leads. These leads will give you diagnose, entire diagnose of all the India's top 10 BPO customers, what the customer is facing. There are 17 teams or you can say team managers. The floor managers, they are working as freelancers for me and I am telling them to pull the data for me. They work for me."

Researchers for the programme then met Gargatti, in Mumbai. "You have the doctor's name, doctor's address, doctor's phone number. Each and every thing here. I have 30,000 files to give you today, right now. I've around 140 diseases here. You just tell me which disease you're looking out for - I can give you anything ," he told them.

The files procured were of patients of London Clinic, one of Britain's top private hospitals. Several hospitals in the National Health Service have also outsourced their transcription to India, sparking concern over data safety following the latest investigation.

The London Clinic said it dealt with its own files internally and did not send them to private companies. But it advised a group of consultants to use a specialist Buckingham-based IT company, DGL Information Technologies UK, with which the clinic has a contract, to help turn paper records into computerised files.

DGL itself did not handle the records but recommended that the doctors use a document-scanning service provided by a company it has a contract with, Scanning And Data Solutions, which operates from Hertfordshire.

But Scanning And Data Solutions then sub-contracted further work on the files to a company in Pune. Scanning And Data Solutions admitted it had sent thousands of medical records to India over the past two years and said it 'had no reason to disbelieve' that it had scanned the records obtained by ITV in India.

It has now suspended its operations there and requested that its partners delete all the information they hold. It has told both Hertfordshire Police and the Indian police of the theft.

DATA PILFERAGE

The revelation has forced police of the two countries to launch an investigation into the data pilferage of the records stored by the Indian BPOs 'We are concerned that private patients' medical records are on sale in India.

The ICO will establish the full facts and will then decide what action, if any, needs to be taken. Medical records are sensitive personal information and must be held securely,' Poole said There is a substantial public opinion building in the western world against outsourcing

I am shocked, shocked...

General topics including a security warning

2009-10-25T22:12:03-06:00

A health care discussion

2009-10-25T22:12:11-06:00

A health care discussion

End of Life Health Care Costs [comment on the Friday essay in View]

Jerry,

While this won't solve the problem of End of Life Health Care costs immediately it may provide a long term solution.

The basic mechanisms are already in place with Health Care Savings Accounts (HCSA), the ones that are "perpetual" not the you must spend it before the end of the year idiocy, and high deductible, $5,000 per year or more, Medical Insurance.

This puts the End of Life Health Care decisions in the hands of patient and their family. They can make the decision whether the benefits of the procedure are worth the cost of the deductible.

There are, of course, many other benefits to this already existing program. It puts the patient back in control of the costs of care and should put the insured in the position of owning the policy.

The only real problems are two fold:

For people over about 35 to 40 and with no chance to build up their HCSA during the younger healthier years this might not be an attractive alternative to traditional Medical Insurance. This is not a good reason to keep this from moving forward. All that is required is to allow those over a certain age to "opt out" and continue with "traditional" coverage.

The real reason that this isn't going to happen with the current Congress is that it does not require an increase in the size of Government.

The Nanny State will take care of you unless you make over a certain arbitrarily determined annual income. If you do most of it will be taken away to meet the "Needs" of others.

Marx probably said it best:

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need(s)."

But wait, that has been tried and it doesn't seem to work very well as far as producing wealth to be redistributed to the needy.

Bob Holmes

It is a consensus of people I respect with credentials in the healthcare business that the real problem is that the healthcare system serves the payers, and the payers are not the patients; putting patients back in control of what is spent, and making any treatment come at something more than a nominal cost, is the only way to control costs.

As an example, I got sufficiently weary of my symptoms this week that I went out to Kaiser, more for reassurance that I wasn't getting something worse than in any real hope they'd be able to do anything for me.

Increasing healthcare costs

Hi Jerry,

I've heard a lot of people talking about increasing healthcare costs, but no one defines exactly what that means. I think costs are increasing because there's a whole heck of a lot more we can do, can treat, and can cure these days than even a decade ago.

So how about this? Let's look at the cost of an appendectomy over the last 30 years, using the same drugs, procedures, equipment, etc that were available then (or the nearest equivalent), remove the effects of price and wage inflation, and see how much it costs today. My guess is that it really hasn't gone up all that much - if at all, and I'll bet there's a fair chance it's actually cheaper today than back then.

To use your situation as an example, 30 years ago, you'd probably have been just admitted to a hospice. Today, you're cured. Did costs go up? Sure. Death is cheap. Likewise, much of the health outcome in the US is due to lifestyle choices, rather than healthcare quality. I challenge the premises of the debate, and do not concede that we have a crisis at all.

If we're going to talk about 'out of control costs', let's compare apples to apples.

Cheers,

Doug

The reason costs go up for public healthcare is that the "minimum" advances to keep pace with the latest developments, no matter how expensive. In theory, everyone ought to be able to go to the Mayo Clinic at the first sign of something serious. After all, if the rich kid can go there, shouldn't my kid be able to go? But since that is impossible, the result is to move much medical research off shore where only the very rich can get at it.

It comes down to the question I keep asking but no one seems to answer: where does the obligation to pay for someone else's medical bills come from? It can't be a Judao-Christian obligation; it can't be a requirement from Almighty God. It certainly wasn't part of the Constitution when I was growing up: when I was a kid, if a comic book wanted to portray a criminal you were supposed to be sympathetic with, he was stealing in order to get the money for a critical operation for his child. No one suggested that taxes pay for the needed operation, or that the doctor ought to be forced to do it for free.

I agree that the pressure is for rising costs -- and of course as the procedures are done more and more often, the costs come down. What used to be enormously expensive and done only by a very few is now quite standard.

The Swiss system is said to have been working well, but costs keep rising: what you expect to get from your doctor expands when you discover you don't have to pay for it.

- who decides?

You wrote;

Of course there are details to worry about. Clearly we can find some cases in which we'd all agree that prolonging life at great expense just isn't worth the money it's costing us. I can also cite cases of 96 year old grandmothers coming out of quadruple by-pass heart surgery with a couple of good years (possibly more) of life ahead. Now what?

In1995 my 87 year old grandmother had diverticulitis. She spent a couple of weeks in the hospital. Afterwards her doctor told her he was sure she wasn’t going to make it. She lived another 10 years with 8 of those years being good ones. She suffered several small strokes and was bed ridden the last two. My father and uncle put a hospital bed in her house and each would stay with her for a week at a time. They knew that she would not last any time in a nursing home and they were willing and able to take care of her.

If we look at the cold hard facts the doctors should have let her die in 95. She was already old and not contributing to society, just a drain. Is this what we want in our health care? My family would have paid any price to have her around another 10 years, but what about the person that has no one?

This is going to be an even bigger problem in the future with an aging population. I don’t know all the answers but I know I don’t want to live in Logan’s Run. At least with our present system the individual’s and the family’s wishes are considered but can you imagine the bureaucracy making these decisions.

Thanks for the website and the many years of enjoying your works.

Greg Coley

"Runner"

Jerry, you wrote:

"The moral dilemma comes when you try to plan out who shall make these end of life care decisions? "

Perhaps Nolan and Johnson got it right in Logan's Run?

Renew! Renew!

Last 2 years

Jerry;

2 points about "last 2 years expenses": 1) the "margins" of anything are always most expensive, and there will always be a margin. So there will always be a "last 2 years". A moving target. 2) How do you know in advance which are going to be the "last" 2? That's only information available in retrospect, generally. So to cut off the last 2 years' care would translate into withholding ANY expensive geriatric treatment .

The Inuit let the oldsters choose for themselves when to board a passing ice floe. <http://mail.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/tsmileys2/03.gif>

Brian Hall

Of course the solution is to have a cutoff age after which you simply don't authorize payment for treatments. In practice that is likely what will happen, but with exceptions for people like Ted Kennedy.

All I know about the actual practices of the Esquimaux comes from novels and hearsay; I have no direct information, and I doubt that many are abandoned to the ice floes in the 21st Century in any event. But Thurow's point was that something like that would certainly save money.

One wonders, though: one suspects that as the average age of the decision panelists gets higher their attitudes may change.

: Healthcare

Ed Koch at age 84 recently received quadruple bypass and valve replacement surgery, and including aftercare the cost will be approximately one million dollars, paid for by his insurance thru his law firm. Under President Obama’s plan, the insurance companies will not be permitted to write any new policies, nor extend existing policies that provide such expensive care for someone as old as Koch, those people will have to pay out of pocket. Ed Koch does not like that proposed change to the health care system.

Robert Samuelson in Newsweek noted that the Democratic health care plans will basically be a wealth transfer from the young to the old. We can spend out national wealth on economic growth, science and technology, or we can spend it on health care and transfer payments; up until now, American has decided to differ from Europe and spend the money on growth and scientific progress. Over the last 100 years, the American way seems to have worked better.

Darryl Miyahira, Honolulu, Hawaii.

data point on "free" health care -

Hi Dr Pournelle,

Just to give you a data point on what free health care looks like. We're living in Northern Italy and our primary insurance is the Italian national insurance, we also have a private plan from the company. We pay a 9% tax for the italian insurance and $200 euros per month for the private plan. Everyone in the country legally gets a health card that means free hospital stays and medicine and just a small charge for diagnostic tests. Dentistry is not included.

Italian health care looks a lot like a hospital from the 70's, fairly drab, not much high tech, but the care in the hospital for children is very good. If a child is sick he gets immediate priority and bypasses all the waiting. The pediatricians are excellent and even worked around my non-existent italian. I don't think they do much for trauma patients locally, when a motorcycle wrecked outside our office, the medics immediately called for a life flight helicopter to fly him to bologna. (60 miles to the nearest trauma center is pretty far)

The problem is with seeing anyone except a GP. My wife needed an x-ray for a wrist problem, it took one week to get the xray and get the results, the GP looked at it and said she needed to see a specialist. Making an appointment to see a specialist requires a trip to the medical administration building, the wait time to see a specialist was one month. In the end, we paid cash to a private clinic, 200 euros and an afternoon later the problem was diagnosed and fixed.

There is no rationing here, but by adding enough bureaucracy I think anyone that is working either avoids the doctor or pays a private doctor rather than missing several days of work. There is much less diagnostic equipment, not only long waits for x-ray results, but long waits for ultrasound tests. Italians think that their health system is the best and are deeply offended by any implication that it's not the best, of course they are used to levels of bureacracy that make me long for the fast moving lines of the louisiana dmv.

Best regards,

Joe G. Ravenna, Italy

See also Switzerland's Health Lessons
http://www.allbusiness.com/government/
elections-politics-politics-political-parties/
13239542-1.html
for more data points.

Switzerland requires co-payments. What happens in the US if someone shows up at an emergency room without the copayment? But the Swiss systems sounds as if it might work -- in a population of mostly literate and rational people dedicated to liberty and mostly imbued with a strong work ethic. Socialism worked extremely well in Sweden for the first couple of generations when people continued to believe that you ought to work and the welfare system was to take care of those less fortunate. As that attitude is replaced with "Somebody's got to work. Who should it be, me?" the results aren't so clearly beneficial.

M0nastaries have free health care. It is not always true among all populations that the demand for a free good is infinite, but the Swiss health care system shows that demand affects the system. "Demand for health care is low in January, but by December when the deductible is past, it becomes very high."

Of course we have no idea what the real plan will be when it finally gets adopted.

Harry Erwin's Letter from England

2009-10-25T22:12:10-06:00

Harry Erwin's Letter From England

An independent Cambridge University review of UK primary education criticises Labour policies: <http://tinyurl.com/yzatwom> <http://tinyurl.com/ykbx47t >. The Labour Government has dismissed the report entirely.

The snoops will always drive a large truck through any small excuse: <http://tinyurl.com/yjrdftw > <http://tinyurl.com/yk2wkzb> <http://tinyurl.com/yzrcfeh>

Postal strike--already there are currently about 30M pieces of mail in the backlog <http://tinyurl.com/yffj2jy> <http://tinyurl.com/yktklnm> <http://tinyurl.com/yjtj42u > <http://tinyurl.com/yhuxrja> Look up 'winter of discontent' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent

> for a historical background.

Back to the Cold War <http://tinyurl.com/yfffrs3>

Why student loans have been delayed this year <http://tinyurl.com/yhockvv >

Judicial decision on copyrights <http://tinyurl.com/yg2k43q>

Harry Erwin, PhD

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." (Catherine Aird)

I took the day off.

2009-10-26T01:00:03-06:00

I took the day off.

Wage controls continue. The war on the Chamber of Commerce continues. It's...

2009-10-26T14:30:22-06:00

Wage controls continue. The war on the Chamber of Commerce continues. It's all pretty reminiscent of other times and places where it all turned out badly.

And today's Wall Street Journal has an op-ed by former Senator Bob Dole on Bosnia. Dole thinks we need to assert more leadership since Bosnia appears to be nearing collapse under the tender mercies of the European Union. Dole was the only man Clinton could beat in 1996, but it was his turn to run and he insisted on his droits d' signeur. He has learned nothing and forgotten nothing, and I fear he is far too typical of the Country Club Republicans, who have never learned that the United States should avoid entangling alliances and not be concerned with territorial disputes in Europe. Bosnia is a European problem. Leave it to the Europeans. The Bosnia mess was never our mess, and Clinton's intervention didn't help the US in any discernible way. One of the fruits of US intervention in Bosnia was rapidly deteriorating relations with the then-nascent post USSR Russia, to no US advantage anyone can name.

The United States seems to work best when governed by a center-right coalition; it would work even better if there were two center-right coalitions contending for power. Alas I see few signs of any political party representing those views. I don't expect to see the kind of government I want, which involves local control over most domestic issues and far less Federal intervention in local and state affairs; but it would be useful to see contending parties who simply want to govern, not transform the country into something it never was and never should be. Even if we could afford it I do not think it would be a good thing for the US to become Sweden (and as I watch Sweden under diversity, one wonders if Sweden can stay Sweden, but that's another story). The Democratic Party doesn't want to govern, it wants to remake us; while the Country Club Republicans seem clueless when they aren't facilitating the ravenous wolves that go about seeking whom they will devour; nor do they have any notion of American national interests.

For a very long time we have sown the wind. Now we reap. And up pops Bob Dole reminding us of a place we have not sown recently. Halloween indeed.

Obama's pay czar has determined pay scales for some of the officials in some...

2009-10-26T14:30:21-06:00

Obama's pay czar has determined pay scales for some of the officials in some of the banks and investment houses. Everything for the state. Nothing against the state. Nothing outside the state. It is certainly change you can believe in. And quite popular.

Roberta and I returned from our morning walk somewhat exhausted but convinced we are pretty well on the mend. It was a costly bout with what was probably swine flu mitigated by the fact that it's very likely we both had the original swine flu way back when. In any event we are climbing out. I got a disappointing amount of work done yesterday and don't have much energy for more today, but I think that too is getting better.

Microsoft had a successful launch of Windows 7 yesterday. If you are running Vista I recommend the upgrade. The upgrade installation works just fine. You'll want to put more thought into the decision for upgrading XP systems. Depends on the system and how long you'll keep it.

It's lunch time. There will be mail.

This is the last day of the pledge drive on KUSC. Since I got the concept of a...

2009-10-25T22:11:56-06:00

This is the last day of the pledge drive on KUSC. Since I got the concept of a "public radio" model web site from KUSC, I tend to follow their lead on how to conduct subscription drives. Not entirely. KUSC pledge week has hundreds of exhortations a day. I don't do that, but I do take the time to remind you that this site operates like public radio: it's free to all, but it can only remain open if enough of you subscribe. This week I am after new subscriptions: people who have been here a while, but haven't got around to subscribing. This is your opportunity. And of course I thank all those who took the opportunity to renew their subscriptions. Thanks!

I took my walk and I feel a little better...

2009-10-26T14:30:19-06:00

I took my walk and I feel a little better, but I am sure slowed down. Sable is happy again: when we don't get out for a daily walk she thinks she has failed in her duty to get those humans out of the house for a while.

This is the official release date of Windows 7. There's a tongue in cheek interview with Leo Laporte on one of the radio talk shows as he announces his breathless excitement when it comes up. Actually, like me, Leo has been using Windows 7 for months, not only on test system but on production systems as well. I no longer have any Vista machines at Chaos Manor.

If you have Vista, you will want to upgrade to Windows 7. The upgrade installation works. It will take about an hour, and that will include update time. (Of course if you do it today it may take significantly longer since the servers are likely to be overloaded.) I'd then go get Microsoft Security Essentials and install that while you are at it. That takes less than half an hour including the initial scan.

The upgrade path to Windows 7 from XP takes a lot longer and is very complicated. You'll need a big external drive, and you need to think about whether your XP system is up to doing Windows 7; a lot of those XP systems are a bit old and slow.

Windows 7 is a bit more than just a major Service Pack. If there's anything about Vista you liked, you'll like Windows 7.

There's a variety of mail today.

The pledge drive continues. I won't run on about it...

2009-10-26T14:30:18-06:00

The pledge drive continues. I won't run on about it, but I will take this opportunity to point out that this place runs on the public radio model. It's free, but it can't continue without reader support. This week's goal is to enroll new subscribers, but my thanks to all those who also renewed.

As for me, the light flu or bad cold continues. I got some work done on Mamelukes yesterday, so I suppose I am recovering, but the cough was worse last night, and it hasn't been my best morning. Hope springs eternal.

Windows 7 Release Date

2009-10-25T22:11:51-06:00

Windows 7 Release Date

There is mail.

2009-10-26T14:30:16-06:00

There is mail.

Query: Harry Stine was a long time friend, but I have lost touch with his family. It's likely I have many of his friends as readers. If you have the email address for any of his family please send it to me.

I will try to cover the proliferation of e-book readers and possible effects...

2009-10-26T14:30:15-06:00

I will try to cover the proliferation of e-book readers and possible effects of their availability in the column. It is clear that many big players have decided there's a future in e-books. Authors are still contemplating what they should do, as are publishers. The Baen model works, but Baen has never been greedy...

It is now the eighth day of the KUSC pledge drive. That reminds me to nag you...

2009-10-25T22:11:46-06:00

It is now the eighth day of the KUSC pledge drive. That reminds me to nag you about subscribing. Thanks again to all those who recently subscribed or renewed their subscriptions. This week I'd like to get some new subscribers: those who have been reading this for a while. This site is run on the 'public radio' model. It's free, but it can only exist if enough of you subscribe. I am pleased to say it's fairly healthy despite the lean economic times, but we need some new subscribers.

I have often recommended Amity Schlaes The Forgotten Man . ( Kindle version...

2009-10-26T14:30:12-06:00

I have often recommended Amity Schlaes The Forgotten Man. (Kindle version available) One subscriber who took my recommendation says

the forgotten man

Jerry,

I have reached the part where Roosevelt is running for president. Ye Gods, we're doing it all over again. We did not learn from last time.

You know, if Hoover had not tried to engineer the un-engineer-able, things would have recovered and we would have not made it to Roosevelt and his wackos. Socialism would probably not have gained much prominence here. The road to hell....

Phil

The book remains one of the best accounts of what we did in the last depression.

There is now mail, including a lengthy healthcare discussion forum.

2009-10-26T14:30:11-06:00

There is now mail, including a lengthy healthcare discussion forum.

Vatican welcomes Anglicans into Catholic church

2009-10-26T14:30:10-06:00

Vatican welcomes Anglicans into Catholic church

When faith overcomes politics

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/
10/20/vatican.anglican.church/

ROME, Italy (CNN) -- The Vatican said Tuesday it has worked out a way for groups of Anglicans who are dissatisfied with their faith to join the Catholic Church.

The Vatican says more Anglicans have expressed an interest in joining the Catholic Church.

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/img/2.0/
mosaic/base_skins/baseplate/corner_wire_BL.gif

The process will allow groups of Anglicans, including bishops and married priests, to join the Catholic Church some 450 years after King Henry VIII broke from Rome and created the Church of England.

The number of Anglicans wishing to join the Catholic Church has increased in recent years as the Anglican church has welcomed the ordination of women and openly gay clergy and blessed homosexual partnerships, said Cardinal William Joseph Levada, the head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.