Monthly Archives: December 2012

Mail 753 Saturday, December 15, 2012

‘Criminals Are Made, Not Born.’

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Kehoe>

Roland Dobbins

I confess that I had not heard of the 1927 Bath School Disaster until this called my attention to it. It is an instructive story.

Falling slinky displays slow-motion causality .

Jerry

“Researchers from the University of Sydney have explained why a spring dropped from a height – in this case the toy “slinky” – appear to ignore the force of gravity for a time. The very odd thing is that “if a slinky is hanging vertically under gravity from its top (at rest) and then released, the bottom of the slinky does not start to move downwards until the collapsing top section collides with the bottom.”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/14/falling_slinky_defies_gravity/

They include a fascinating video of physics in action. Puts you in mind of Wile E. Coyote.

Ed

It was a bit odd watching the video (which is inside the Register website) but halfway through oddity gives way to astonishment. Well into the video a very long slinky is released with just a bit of lateral motion given to the top of the spring. What happens next is more than counter intuitive, it is nearly astounding. The top of the spring falls faster than the ‘signal’ wave, so that the top of the spring is now falling fast enough to pass the bottom before the bottom begins to fall.

Now think about all this through the eyes of relativity, with the notion of the top and the bottom of the spring as either observer or observed object. Keep in mind the premise of relativity regarding the medium through which signals pass, and the non-existence (to relativists) of the aether in which light waves wave. Under Petr Beckmann’s non-relativity theory, there is an aether, which is the local gravitational field. Of course the ‘signal’ to the bottom of the spring that it is no longer supported and thus can start falling travels in a wave through the medium of the spring itself. You can experiment with that sort of thing with a very long rope suspended at each end: shake one end and a wave travels down the rope. You can see it. I used to do that a lot in the hopes of getting a feel for wave mechanics. It makes visualization a great deal easier.

There is a link in the Register text to the actual paper Modeling a Falling Slinky which has partial differential equations. Following them would take more concentration than I care to give this, but I am reminded of a problem we had in a mathematics class involving modeling the result of forces applied to one end of a very long and very rigid rod. That got sufficiently complex that it took a great deal of work to understand; I suspect that’s the case with the falling slinky, so I don’t think I’ll contemplate the relativistic equations this observation may require for a complete mathematical description. I suspect they would be of a complexity far beyond my abilities no matter how hard I concentrate. Relativistic descriptions of simple phenomena like aberration of the components of a spectroscopic binary get beyond the mathematics ability of nearly everyone. Fortunately they can be modeled by assuming a medium, propagation of gravity speed, and forgetting the relativity. Come to think of it, that’s just what was done here.

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

In your latest missive, you wrote:

"The actual debate here is ‘distributism’. Just how large a discrepancy between rich and poor can a republic survive? The problem with socialism and social engineering is that the money goes to finance a huge bureaucracy which grows more and more powerful, and the power of government is more oppressive than ever was that of the rich upper class. The distributist notion is to divide excess wealth among all equally. That at least doesn’t build huge government bureaucracies, and gives the recipients some choice over what they do with their windfall gains. Small is beautiful, employee owned businesses are best – etc. And of course there are many variations on the theme. It’s best explained by one of its proponents. I’ve found this <http://www.scribd.com/doc/69349217/Age-old-%E2%80%98Distributism%E2%80%99-Gains-New-Traction-The-Washington-Post> . I am sure that is much more (including of course some of the work of Chesterton and Belloc)."

I can think of two things to contribute to the conversation on this:

1) It occurs to me that distributism will prove to exacerbate the gap between rich and poor, not close it. Why? Because the wealthiest of the wealthy can afford lawyers to protect them, offshore accounts, and friends in government. Saw a lot of the revolving door when I was in defense contracting. The ultimate result is a very few large companies like old-style AT&T or General Electric or GM locking up most of the wealth and productivity while the underclass grows.

In order to close the gap between rich and poor, we need to provide some way for poor people to become rich. Which means to foster economic opportunity, provide minimum barrier to creating new businesses, and allow people who make wealth to keep it. If you want to hammer really big combinations like GE or Microsoft or Borders or Walmart to allow more mom-and-pop stores , fine. But current government policy fosters and rewards the huge players (who oftentimes are the only ones who can afford things like CMMI-5 level processes) while making it harder for the little ones to play.

Of course the current administration is pursing diametrically opposite policies. All I can say to that is thank God for term limits, and we will have chances to reverse course. I believe the US as we once knew it is permanently and irrevocably dead, but that doesn’t mean life has to be miserable. The Roman Empire was not the Roman Republic, but it was still a sight better than a lot of other places out there.

2) I have recently read two books on very disparate cultures — "Blood and Thunder" by Hampton Sides describing the war with the Navajo, and "The Sex Lives of Cannibals", by J. Marten Troost , on life on Tarawa as the husband of an aid worker.

Both of these cultures have this in common: Personal wealth is considered very poor taste. Wealthy people are — or were — expected to give away much of their wealth to the tribe. To be outstanding was to be considered guilty of witchcraft.

While this sounds more "fair", the result of the societal approach is a subsistence level of society marked by poverty. Instead of having everyone equal in wealth we have everyone equal in poverty and squalor, because no one will step out to do anything as the fruits of their labor will be snatched away from them.

It’s not at all different from what Sam Clemens described in "The Innocents Abroad"

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3176/3176-h/3176-h.htm#ch8

"

The Emperor of Morocco is a soulless despot, and the great officers under him are despots on a smaller scale. There is no regular system of taxation, but when the Emperor or the Bashaw want money, they levy on some rich man, and he has to furnish the cash or go to prison. Therefore, few men in Morocco dare to be rich. It is too dangerous a luxury. Vanity occasionally leads a man to display wealth, but sooner or later the Emperor trumps up a charge against him—any sort of one will do—and confiscates his property. Of course, there are many rich men in the empire, but their money is buried, and they dress in rags and counterfeit poverty. Every now and then the Emperor imprisons a man who is suspected of the crime of being rich, and makes things so uncomfortable for him that he is forced to discover where he has hidden his money.

Moors and Jews sometimes place themselves under the protection of the foreign consuls, and then they can flout their riches in the Emperor’s face with impunity."

Morocco wasn’t exactly a beacon for the 19th century Mediterranean either.

The lessons of history are clear and indisputable: Humans being what they are, if society is to prosper ordinary humans must have the ability to become rich. This means both minimizing the barriers to their doing so and a willingness to break up combinations that will hoard capital. It’s a shame we will have to relearn those lessons as a culture, but learning is better than willful ignorance.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Of course the mechanisms of confiscation always generate results you didn’t expect or want. Redistributing the wealth of the 10% or even the 2% wealthiest in the United States will not likely make anyone rich except those who are managing the despoiling. That has always been the great failure of socialism: it always works out in practice to create a New Class (Djilas has much to say on that) while at the same time greatly reducing the wealth to be distributed, so that the poorest become even poorer, the middle class becomes less wealthy, and even the New Class – nomenklatura, party officials, union leaders, etc. – is often less wealthy than they would be if the economy worked properly. As Mrs. Thatcher said, the problem with socialism is that you run out of other people’s money.

As to social conventions, probably the most easily examined example would be Zurich, where you have immensely wealthy people living in fairly modest means by choice. Of course I live near the somewhat different examples of Malibu and parts of Beverly Hills. Living in the filthy rich style comes and goes in and out of fashion in irregular cycles.

The real lesson to be learned is that if you are going to try to reduce the disparity between rich and poor, you should do it in a way that doesn’t create a class who can exist only by continuing the process. Setting up a “disparity of wealth” bureaucracy is never a good idea – it will always find that the disparity is too great, and the bureaucracy needs more highly paid agents.

At the same time, we have learned more than once that “too big to fail” should be too big to exist, and that too great a concentration of capital can be as inefficient as the confiscation of all capital. The concept of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was to stop actions in restraint of trade and break up monopoly power. It didn’t always work as intended – certainly folks who’ve got money can scratch where they itch, and will always look for means to defend what they have, often through fairly desperate and sometimes violent means.

Great discrepancy in wealth always tempts demagogues to incite the people into despoiling the rich and “spread the wealth around”.

The point I am trying to make is that there are institutions that are too big to fail, and thus ought to reorganized into institutions any one of which can be allowed to fail. Instead of Five Huge Banks we would all be better off with fifty or a hundred smaller ones. And those government financial institutions which are beginning to dwarf everything else are themselves creating dangerous powers. The “student loan” phenomena pours more money into the Universities which can always absorb the money and will never go back to lower costs; and meanwhile the entire middle class is subjected to lifetime enthralldom to government agencies and bureaucracies. I find that horrifying.

It would be better if everyone didn’t graduate with a lifetime debt, but it is worse when that debt is owed to government and can never be forgiven no matter what the circumstances. Yet we seem headed there, and no one seems to care.

‘Last year, he took home $822,302, all of it paid by taxpayers.’

<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-12/california-psychiatrists-paid-400-000-shows-bidding-war.html>

Roland Dobbins

Public sector employment is best

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-11/-822-000-worker-shows-california-leads-u-s-pay-giveaway.html

Phil

Not that you’re a big fan of government employees as a general rule, but can you imagine someone instrumental in finding Bin Laden is stuck at a lower grade than people coordinating corporate tax shelter work at another agency?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-zero-dark-thirty-shes-the-hero-in-real-life-cia-agents-career-is-more-complicated/2012/12/10/cedc227e-42dd-11e2-9648-a2c323a991d6_story_1.html

Over the past year, she was denied a promotion that would have raised her civil service rank from GS-13 to GS-14, bringing an additional $16,000 in annual pay.

–Unsigned for obvious reasons…

The new class at work. Socialism always creates these. Lest anyone get the idea that I am an anarchist, I understand that we need and are often well served by a civil service. My observation has been that it always works in its own interest, and sometimes needs to be restrained and reorganized.  If I had my way we would begin by passing the old Hatch Act on political activities of Federal employees. Accepting civil service employment forfeits your political rights including advocacy and donation to political causes.

A Poor Constraint on Power

Jerry,

In View, 12/12/12 you wrote, "Power can be checked only by other power."

The power of the King can be constrained by shame. It certainly does not work well, but here and there a King stops before exercising power.

It seems to me that shame no longer exists in our culture.

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Heaven and Hell are both rumored to be absolute monarchies. Monarchy is always the best form of government for large states – but only if you can assure that you have a good monarch. Alas, that doesn’t always work. As witness the events before and after the death of Marcus Aurelius (see the movie Gladiator for a fictionalized account). The laws of heredity assure that once in a while you will get a good king, and kings spend the early parts of their lives learning how to do the job of being king. Democracy assures that whomever you get as supreme leader will have spent all of his life learning how to get the job, and not so much on learning how to do it. So it goes.

The genius of the Framers was to divide power, giving the federal government enough – but just enough – to assure the survival of the Union without giving it the power to meddle in such matters as the public schools or religion (the States were assured of the right to create Established Churches supported by public taxes if they so wished) or wages. The general run of government was left to the states with the view that if one overtaxed its citizens they would flee West or to another state. And so forth.

But now federal supremacy has upset that balance and created an elected king who spends his life campaigning.

U of Chicago Law on The Mote

The Mote in God’s Eye made the latest list of books (row 6, item 4) recommended by the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School: http://webcast-law.uchicago.edu/facultyreading/

Dale Beihoffer

As well it should. Thanks…

Mail 753 Tuesday, December 11, 2012

I will try to get a new View up quickly, but here is interesting mail with comments.

Dr. Pournelle

A brief on US copyright law reformation. <http://www.scribd.com/doc/113633834/Republican-Study-Committee-Intellectual-Property-Brief>

The story behind this brief and why it was withdrawn tells volumes about why US copyright law is horrid and why it will not be righted. In short, the big money interests want to keep it a mess and congresscritters follow the money. http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/11/18/republicans-rethinking-copyright-reform/

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

The first paper gives a very good case for a thorough revision of copyright law. It points out that the law as it stands it probably unconstitutional; indeed, you can make a pretty good case that the Berne Convention, of which the US is a party, is itself unconstitutional. It depends on your view of how treaties, signed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, can give Congress powers that it did not have under the original Constitution. Those old enough to remember the debates over the (never adopted) Bricker Amendment may recall that this is not a new debate.

Authors of course have a different idea. Authors believe they have a moral right to control their works, and some – Ursula Le Guin is an exemplar – have very strong views on this. Author associations also have strong views on the subject, and the Berne Convention, which was essentially dictated by Victor Hugo in the late 19^th Century, was pretty well built on that premise.

My own view is that we have gone far too far with the current Copyright Acts. I do not believe that the Constitution ever granted, or that anyone who ratified it ever wanted, intellectual property to be protected for periods of fifty years, and certainly not for the life of the author plus fifty years, which is the minimum set in the Berne Convention which we ratified in 1976 or so; and then we modified that to life plus seventy years – and then added that if the author has no rights to the work because all rights were sold to a corporation, the corporation can have 95 years after publication or 120 years after creation. You may guess the origin of this provision for intellectual property protection. Of course you may also question just how this helps ”to promote the progress of science and useful arts,” which is the constitutional basis for the granting of a monopoly to the author “for a limited time”. This is well discussed in the first draft paper.

I wrote my first works under the old law which gave a copyright for 28 years, with the option of renewal in the 28^th year. My first work was copyrighted in 1968. That would have worked for me, and I doubt that anyone ever produced more or worked harder because the copyright was extended to live plus fifty years, then seventy.

I suspect that no matter how badly the law needs reform, it won’t happen.

Surviving Obamacare

A doctor’s advice on how to cope with Obamacare: Briefly, live healthy, and get used to paying cash for routine medical services (possibly via a Health Savings Account) with high-deductible catastrophic coverage as a backup. (This advice is pretty much where I’ve already arrived at myself, FWIW.)

http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/site/article/defensive_medicine_how_to_survive_obamacare/

He also advises moving to a Red state that has opted out of creating its own Obamacare "Exchange". "States that opt out effectively defend their citizens from some of the more objectionable aspects of Obamacare."

He ends by predicting that a mass conservative migration to Red states will eventually tip back the electoral balance, and also hasten the day when the left-behind Blue states either collapse or reform. I think he’s an optimist; I expect that when California or Illinois implode they’ll figure out a way to make the rest of us pay. Depends on whether that electoral balance has been tipped yet, I guess. We can hope.

Porkypine

Understand that if you have 49 employees you dare not expand your business. Think on that when looking at employment opportunities. And you might contemplate getting into a government health care program. Smart people can game the system as well as dullards. There are opportunities in these games. We can discuss the ethics another time: but if the government is determined to transfer money from one person to another, it may be better to receive.

Hyperinflation

Jerry, you gave the monetarian explanation of inflation as "Inflation is too much money chasing too few goods."

What’s different now is Asian factories. In a race between the Fed printing money and Asian factories making goods, who do you think will win the race?

I’m watching the velocity of money. While the Fed has injected trillions of dollars, a lot of that money is idly held in corporate accounts or banks’ "excess reserves" stored at the Fed. I don’t seem much inflation until the velocity starts to climb.

Bob Devine

Automation and higher productivity have a way of making certain people useless. They are then paid to stay out of the way. But that is not without cost, since they continue to consume food and energy as well as manufactured goods. Entitlements can force deficits that can be covered only by running the printing presses. Even with greater productivity there is a limit.

Of course free contraception and abortions does tend to cut into future demand.

Probability of Carter-style inflation

Dr. Pournelle,

Carter-style inflation is unlikely, because the demand for savings by soon-to-be retirees is so high. That’s why the Fed’s current money-printing has not already caused inflation; by depressing interest rates, they have depressed the return on guaranteed-return investments like savings accounts, CDs, and high-quality bonds. So, retirement savings have to increase.

There has been market-specific inflation as producers have struggled to meet demand as a result of policy changes. Ethanol mandates, water-rights changes, and immigration policies have caused food inflation; Environmental regulation has caused fuel refinery capacity to be insufficient; Oil’s money-like qualities have caused repeated boom and bust cycles in that commodity along with precious metals.

I’m wiling to be proven wrong, but I don’t see how wages can rise in this environment. The only way broad-based inflation can get started in the next several years is if people lose faith in the dollar as a store of value and begin to use an alternative. At that point you have hyperinflation.

Neil

If you raise the value of entitlements – that is, pay more to people for not working – then do you not immediately raise the wage you must pay to get someone to work at all? And it goes up the scale that way. Some people work because they cannot imagine being idle. Others because it gives them a purpose in life. Some because they like their work. But some work for simple economic reasons.

And as commodities rise in price – and they certainly are rising – does that not put pressure on those who eat to find new sources of income? Or more income?

Subj: Is it 1937?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-18/2013-looks-a-lot-like-1937-in-four-fearsome-ways.html

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Miss Amity Schlaes understands US economics better than the President. And her The Forgotten Man is well worth reading for anyone who wants to see how we got into the Depression and stayed there. And yes, it does look a lot like 1937.

They won. We lost. Learn to live with it. Which is to say, learn some economic survival skills.

Subject: Federal Waste on Rural Broadband Program

This is where the taxpayers’ dollars are going in the great rural broadband program. They are being wasted on $22,000 routers and half a million dollars a year consultants.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/west-va-internet-consultant-paid-512k-in-federal-stimulus-funds/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29

—

Dwayne Phillips

Being a government consultant is great work if you can get it, and you can get it if you just know the right people. And sing the right songs.

Caltrans survey

Jerry,

Just got a call trying to persuade our household to participate in a Caltrans travel survey. Got to the point where after verifying the address they had they said I would receive a diary where all members of the household would record their travel for ONE DAY! It was at this point that I decided that I didn’t want to participate in a boondoggle that would provide no information with any statistical significance.

We’re from the Government and we’re here to help. ARRRRRGHHHH!u,

Bob Holmes

About as useful as bunny inspectors. And of course they all got raises in California’s budget. Then they went out and told us they needed new taxes to save the schools. It’s for the children! I’d be glad to consult with the state on finding useless jobs they can eliminate. Not likely to happen…

Geostationary shadows–

Dear Jerry:

Wouldn’t orbital mechanics be easy if the sun did not move in the sky ?

Having failed to consult Arthur Clarke by Ouija board , the UN actually paid this guy to pitch this proposal at the Doha climate talks!

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=384030258329026

Unless you like mummy music, best dive in halfway through it

Russell Seitz

So now we have national, state, and international consultants and employees on projects that a high school junior could tell you were not useful…

On the topic of makers/takers, I would like to commend to you the following: http://cantrip.org/stupidity.html?seeniepage=1&seenIEPage=1, via American Digest (americandigest.org).

The author, Carlo M. Cipolla, seems to be onto something, and fits with makers/takers dichotomy, which you certainly recognize is more complex. His idea is there are four types of folks, and any individual can slide around from one to other, or combine aspects of more than one: Helpless; intelligent; stupid, and bandit.

You may also be familiar with Scott Adams "Dilbert Principle", which is that incompetence is promoted directly to management, as contrasted to Peter Principle, where individuals are competent at one level, and are then eventually promoted to a level of incompetency. He felt this theory of human behavior was incomplete, so followed up with his book, "The Way of the Weasel" which puts forward a more simplistic, yet comprehensive theory: "People are Weasels".

Cheers, Stephen Barron

Of course the subject is far more complex than is usually reflected in political speeches or for that matter in social “science”. Increased productivity, automation, robots (or the equivalent of increased productivity – offshoring work such as service jobs to Bombay) all change the equation. But you can’t just drown the surplus population even if they can no longer do useful work at an economic rate. Now what?

"Takers"

Dear Mr. Pournelle:

I do think there’s a significant gap in your recent definition of "takers" as "people who have no choice but to rely on the government for subsistence." While conceding that this represents a significant category, I don’t see why you exclude from the "taker" category such groups as "people who use wealth and political influence in order to gain government favors or engineer redistribution of wealth toward themselves." As the old song goes, "some rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen." I continue to suspect that wealthy "takers" are likely to do the Republic a great deal more lasting harm than people who "have no choice." Or, to rephrase it, at what point might economic and political oligarchy become kleptocracy?

Thank you again for your thoughtful discussions.

Allan E. Johnson

Apologies: I meant that those who have no choice are in fact a significant part of the universe of “takers.” There are also those who believe they are rendering value for what they get – bunny inspectors come to mind as an extreme case, but there are others who “do a good job”. Unfortunately a job not worth doing is not worth doing well.

And crony capitalists are a severe threat. Adam Smith pointed out that never did two capitalists confer but that they try to think of ways to get the government to limit newcomer access to their profession. Gate keepers, credentialism, these are always demanded by capitalists. Keep the competition down by raising the price of entry into the profession. And so it goes.

And yes, you can see how kleptocrary grows. Democracy is messy. The Constitution was intended for a nation of relatively ‘good’ people. It cannot make a moral or ethical republic out of those who want neither.

Jerry

What’s going on here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyk1HXvCNks

It’s a husky-baby duet, but the dog doesn’t look too happy with the kid.

Ed

Whoever has the camera also has some treats and is teasing the Husky. That’s a typical statement of entitlement as opposed to straight begging — you’ve got something you promised me. I thought at first they’d promised the dog a walk and then got into this, but clearly it’s staged.

Huskies talk a lot. If people are talking they think they can join the conversation. But when they are that persistent it’s an entitlement argument. Sable will come in and demand that we fill her water bowl if it’s empty and that’s a different performance from ‘it’s time to walk’ or ‘do you not know that you have been ignoring the dog?"

The kid is fascinated of course, and clearly trusts the dog with almost anything — and has also learned not to pull tails or grab fur. Interesting but it was staged. Dog isn’t unhappy, just a bit confused because he thinks he’s entitled to something and this human keeps fiddling with that strange device.

While I do not at present advocate secession, and while I take the quotations offered by Bud Pritchard to heart, there is another valid viewpoint on the issue.

First, George Washington and Thomas Paine were secessionist. Indeed, the first, very familiar passage from Thomas Paine was specifically directed at those who were, at that very moment, engaged in a secessionist struggle. Notably absent from the list offered is the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them . . .”

This was directed at a chief executive who was distant – not only physically but conceptually, intellectually and, dare I say, spiritually – and at a legislature that manifestly cared not a whit for the interests of the colonists but viewed them mainly as a handy source of revenue. How different is our situation today?

The sentiments expressed by Washington were directed at a different people, at a different time and under different circumstances. Who today would not enthusiastically subscribe to them under similar conditions? But if California goes toes up (not ‘if’ really, but ‘when’) and begs the Congress for relief, it would require the people of other states that are managed by grownups to bail them out. We are witnessing exactly that situation in Europe right now.

If the people of, say, Texas, decide that it is in their best interests to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, by what natural principle does any of the ‘other’ people – be it one or many – have the legitimate authority to deny them? Bending another to one’s will by force is tyranny.

Just askin’.

Richard ‘Rebel Rick’ White

Austin, Texas

It is not likely but also not impossible that the United States will come apart. And the “right” of it will be decided by force of arms. Artillery is the last resort of kings said Victor Hugo. We no longer have kings. At least not under that title. But artillery is still the last argument.

Our Irrational Approach To Space Safety

Jerry–

I’ve just finished up a book on that topic, currently titled: "Safe Is Not An Option: How Our Futile Obsession With Getting Everyone Back Alive Is Killing Human Spaceflight." I’ve got a Kickstarter project going to get it published: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1960236542/safe-is-not-an-option-our-futile-obsession-in-spac

Clark Lindsey has a pre-publication review of it at New Space Watch: http://www.newspacewatch.com/articles/a-few-more-kicks-needed-for-quotsafe-is-not-an-optionquot.html

I hope your readers may find the topic of interest, and take the opportunity to both see that the project happens (if I can raise enough money, I’ll do a symposium on the subject in conjunction with the Space Transportation Conference in DC in February) and to get a signed first edition. If you’d like to read a draft yourself, drop me an email, and I’ll send you a Word version.

Hope you’re doing well,

Rand Simberg

The pilots and astronauts were always willing to take chances that the civilian administrators would not allow.

Sometimes, even North Korea says something even more ludicrous than anything it has ever said before.  Today is one of those days:

<.>

Pyongyang, November 29 (KCNA) — Archaeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom (B.C. 277-A.D. 668).

…

The discovery of the unicorn lair, associated with legend about King Tongmyong, proves that Pyongyang was a capital city of Ancient Korea as well as Koguryo Kingdom."

</>

http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2012/201211/news29/20121129-20ee.html

Everyone knows that unicorns don’t like to live near major population centers!  According to the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Monstrous Manual:  "Unicorns dwell only in temperate woodlands, away from human habitation".  As far as this unicorn having anything to do with a legendary king:  "These fierce but good creatures shun contact with all but sylvan creatures (dryads, pixies, sprites, and the like); however, they will show themselves to defend their woodland home. 

So you see, this must be an incorrect statement as that capital city would not have been a temperate woodland, unicorns do not like humans, and this legendary king was not a sylvan creature.  =)  I don’t suppose the whole thing about unicorns not existing outside role playing games, fantasy novels, children’s cartoons, and the cartoonish regime of North Korea would have anything to bear on these points. 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Defense spending

Dr. Pournelle,

My first, although not my only, concern in defense spending is overseas military bases. They’re a burden on all of these United States, even those states that benefit from federal spending on defense. Most of the comments I’ve been reading involve closing overseas bases and bringing back the military personnel and equipment to United States soil. This would save money, at least in the short term, but how do we then project force, if it turns out we must? Much though I would prefer to let other parts of the world defend themselves without our involvement, I remember Mr. Heinlein’s comments in Starship Troopers that wars are not won by defense.

If some idiot or ideology wants to attack us, I would hope to fight the battle on their soil, not ours. There’s a verse, seldom printed, from "My Country, ‘Tis of thee" that’s pertinent: "No more shall tyrants here, with haughty tread appear, and soldier bands. No more shall tyrants tread above the patriot dead; no more our blood be shed by alien hands." I really want to keep it that way.

President Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex remains relevant. I suggest, though, that we also have to fear the entitlement-industry complex. At some point, the productive will no longer support, or even have the means to support, the parasites. Kipling once wrote, "Who stands, if freedom fall?" If, between military and entitlement spending, we fall, the world may never recover. China and other countries may continue, but will freedom? As Lincoln put it, we are the last, best, hope. If we fall, then, for the whole world, does Night come?

It’s a quandary that as far as I know has never been faced in the history of the world, where one nation is of such paramount importance. Between wars and entitlements and global whatever it is that the climate’s doing, do we have a solvable problem? And even if it’s solvable, can we solve it?

jomath

The proper question in determining a military budget is, just what is it you are trying to accomplish? If your purpose is to be a world superpower and go forth slaying dragons all over the world you need a superpower military. Given enough money you can always do that. The Anglo Saxon people have always been more war like than we like to admit. American seem to have learned that well from the mother country.

Who stands if freedom fall is not quite the same as asking who stands if we do not have the most powerful army the world has ever known. One reason the conservatives have lost the recent election is that the American people have tired of perpetual war. It has not been the American way.

If we wish to build an overseas expendable professional army of Legionnaires that is one kind of expense. If we wish the world’s most powerful Navy that is another. If we wish a non-expeditionary army, one looks to the National Guard. But you need to know what it is you want to accomplish before choosing your tools.

Another temperature data point

Here’s a report about a giant sequoia that makes you wonder what was happening in 1580.

http://news.yahoo.com/upon-further-review-giant-sequoia-tops-neighbor-185737665.html

In addition to painstaking measurements of every branch and twig, the team took 15 half-centimeter-wide core samples of The President to determine its growth rate, which they learned was stunted in the abnormally cold year of 1580 when temperatures in the Sierra hovered near freezing even in the summer and the trees remained dormant.

Interesting. The Viking Warm period ended early in the 14^th Century with a year of rain and more rain followed by snow, after which things got colder and colder.

Russell Seitz keeps reminding me that volcanic ash can go airborne and increase the reflectivity of the Earth thus reducing the amout of sunlight that gets through: But it can also deposit itself as dark objects on ice and snow, increasing the amount of sunlight absorbed and melting the ice and glaciers. Sorting out which happened after centuries have passed is very difficult.