January 2013 – Chaos Manor

Maybe they need carbolic acid?

By Jerry Pournelle | Jan 31, 2013 - 12:23 pm | Updated: January 31, 2013 - 12:23 pm | View

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View 760 Thursday, January 31, 2013

Years ago when I was in graduate school the University of Washington put on a play called “All for Mary” (I find that it also was a 1955 comedy movie but I never saw it) and my friend Rod Whitaker was one of the lead actors. Rod later became a best selling author under the pen name Trevanian, but in those days he was a graduate student in Glenn Hughes’s UW drama department. I loved the play. One of the repeat comedy lines in the play is said by all of the characters at least once: “Hospital very bad. Many go in. Few come out.”

I’ve been known to repeat that line more than once.

When Hospitals Become Killers

A drug-resistant germ has struck even the National Institutes of Health Medical Center.

By BETSY MCCAUGHEY

In 2011, the lethal germ known as CRK—short for carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella—raced through the National Institutes of Health Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Antibiotics couldn’t stop it. Infection-control precautions recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could not contain it. Six patients died because of it, including a 16-year-old boy.

Last week, public-health researchers released alarming data in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology showing that the same germ that swept through the NIH is invading hospitals across the country. Researchers writing this month in another medical journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, warn that CRK poses "a major threat to public health."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324156204578273674102866886.html

The CDC estimates that there about 99,000 annual deaths from hospital acquired diseases, and the number is growing. By contrast, deaths from traffic accidents peaked at about 50,000 a year a few decades ago, and have been dropping ever since. We’re down to under 35,000 a year now. Of course much of that decrease is due to modern medicine and modern emergency hospitals.

It’s just one more thing to worry about.

For a short period of time when I was in high school I was employed as a junior blood technician at a downtown Memphis clinic. Standards in those days were much lower than they are now, of course, but one thing we were taught was meticulous if somewhat drastic sanitation. One of the practices we used was periodic sterilization of darned near everything with carbolic acid, which, I admit, was pretty drastic. It used to be that every biology lab had a bottle of carbolic acid for sterilization, and you could ever get soap with carbolic acid in it – I know, because we were required to use it to wash our hands before and after taking a blood sample. I don’t suppose they do that now. I do wonder how a bug could develop a resistance to phenol, and I doubt any have done so. Maybe we need to go back to something like that? I mean, how much do we spend on trying to prevent traffic deaths, which seem to account for about half the number that you get from hospital infections, and we’re only discussing deaths now, not infections from which people recover.

The Wall Street Journal article asserts that

We have the technology to contain these drug-resistant germs. What is needed is the will to do it. Otherwise patients with cancer, organ transplants and other immune-compromised conditions may find themselves worrying: Is it safe to go to the hospital?

Just one more thing to worry about.

It’s lunch time. I’ll be back. Bill Gates had an interesting essay on measurement and progress last week, and I have some thoughts on that.

Lessons

By Jerry Pournelle | Jan 29, 2013 - 1:20 pm | Updated: January 29, 2013 - 2:59 pm | View

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View 760 Tuesday, January 29, 2013

The President has announced his new immigration ‘reform’ wishes. The details are not important because this is part of the new strategy from the White House. The notion of a new White House strategy has been commented on by many, but perhaps the most eloquent and persuasive statement is by Peggy Noonan, long a conservative commentator but seldom accused of extremism.

Noonan: Lessons Conservatives Need to Learn

Obama is a formidable foe. He means to change the country and crush the GOP.

The senators weren’t organized or focused, they didn’t coordinate questions, follow up, have any coherent or discernible strategy. The only senator who really tried to bore in was Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who asked a pointed question that was never answered: If you wanted to find out what happened when the consulate was attacked, why didn’t you pick up the phone the next day and call those who’d been there? John McCain made a spirited, scattered speech—really, it was just like him—that couldn’t find the energy to end in serious questions.

Some conservatives are saying Mrs. Clinton looked unhinged, angry. In their dreams. She came across as human and indignant, and emerged untouched. What air there was in the Benghazi balloon leaked out. Someday we’ll find out what happened when somebody good writes a book.

All this looked like another example of the mindless personal entrepreneurialism of the Republicans on the Hill: They’re all in business for themselves. They make their speech, ask their question, and it’s not connected to anyone else’s speech or question. They aren’t part of something that moves and makes progress.

Minority parties can’t act like this, in such a slobby, un-unified way.

Hill Republicans continue not to understand that they are the face of the party when the cameras are trained on Washington. They don’t understand how they look, which is like ants on a sugar cube.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323539804578262260997553442.html

She has more to say, but that’s the essence. The Republican Establishment can’t handle this all out assault on the opposition. Either the Republicans get their act together and become a legitimate opposition party or they are finished. The Establishment Republicans aren’t accustomed to this. During their forty years of wandering in the wildness they became something else, an Established Permanent Minority Party, existing in large part on largess from the Democrats, sometimes winning the Presidency – first to Nixon, then to Reagan, finally to Bush – but never losing the permanent minority attitude. They resented Newt Gingrich and his “we can win” attitude. The Establishment Republicans did what they always did, made accommodations and compromises with the Democrats. Mr. Bush rooted every Reagan person of note from the White House, showing what the Establishment Republicans really thought of him and his populism. Then, despite having a Republican President elected in large part because he made the flat campaign statement “Read my lips. No new taxes,” the Establishment cooperated with the Democrats to raise taxes, and President Bush went along with that. The result was that George Bush, who after the First Gulf War had a popularity of over 80%, managed to squander all that and fail of reelection, losing to the governor of Arkansas who already had an interesting personal background. They failed. They lost to – well, to a country bumpkin widely reputed to have bimbo issues. They lost to – to Clinton?

One reason they lost was that Mr. Clinton was obviously a master politician who had learned well from Roosevelt. But in the resulting shock reaction they did essentially nothing, remained disorganized, and – and along came Newt with his Contract with America who swept the mid-term election giving the Republicans a majority in the House for the first time in decades. But the Establishment wasn’t finished yet. They insisted on running one of their own against Clinton. Bob Dole, probably the only major Republican that Clinton could beat. Managed to lose the election – but the Republicans retained the House and Newt remained Speaker.

And then followed an interesting era. Clinton, a master politician, and Gingrich, a committed intellectual conservative and political realist, managed to halt the growth of government and balance the budget.

That era didn’t last because of Mr. Gingrich’s personal failures. Mr. Clinton was able to weather his personal indiscretion storms. Newt was ashamed of himself and resigned. The result was the return of the Establishment Republicans with a vengeance. They came back – and went mad. We got “big government conservatism” as if that were even possible, much less desirable. They threw away all the lessons of the Reagan victory and the Contract with America, and descended in their wrath on the Reagan and Gingrich Republicans. And while they have had no choice but to make some compromises with the Tea Party Republicans, the Establishment clearly would rather have the respect of the Democrat leadership and media than lose its power.

Now those are generalizations, and most Establishment Republicans would not accept this assessment, but it sure looks that way from where I sit. There are deep divisions among the Establishment Republicans – in particular over the neo-conservatives, some of whom have been accepted into the Establishment and some of whom have not – but in general they stand together and have their own view of the way the system works.

As Peggy Noonan warns, they are in for a shock. The President has no intention of going back to the old ways and the old system. He intends to change the Republic in a fundamental way. In doing it he will divide the Democrat Party, and the real future of the republic –becoming-a-democracy will be in the hands of new democrats. History has seen this sort of thing before. The future of Rome lay not with Sulla and the Optimates but with Marius and the Populares. Until there came a time when neither was important and the Praetorian Guard determined who should be Emperor, but that is another story and we are not there yet.

It is time that the Republican Establishment realized that it has a better chance of retaining honor by getting along with the Tea Party and embracing freedom.

Someone has to stick with the principles of liberty and freedom. Maybe even a few Democrats will discover that.

New Eyes from Kaiser; Was Ben Ghazi a terrorist? And an inaugural.

By Jerry Pournelle | Jan 24, 2013 - 5:12 pm | Updated: January 24, 2013 - 5:20 pm | View

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View 759 Thursday, January 24, 2013

The grandchildren are back in Washington, and I have new spectacles. Tri-focal with photo-grey for normal use, and bi-focal computer glasses. I think I invented computer glasses in an early BYTE column: I described how I got my optometrist to prescribe my corrective formula in glasses with a 28” focal length, that being the distance to the screen of Ezekiel, my friend who happened to be a Z-80 computer with Electric Pencil. Alas I didn’t think to try to patent or copyright or trademark the name computer glasses or the concept. Not sure it could be copyrighted, and in those days I was very much opposed to that kind of copyright and trademark. Still am, I suppose, but it would be nice to have a dollar for everyone who now has computer glasses.

In any event I have cataracts but they only degrade my sight to about 20/25 or so, so there’s no recommendation that anything be done, and since my last glasses were three years old the new ones are remarkably better than the old ones were. Didn’t take all that long to get used to them, either, although most of yesterday was used up getting my sight back after having the drops and the cataract examination. I note that almost all that is automated now, and much of it done by technicians. The actual examination was done by an optometrist, not an ophthalmologist as it was last time they did that. The eye examination equipment is all pretty well automated, and ePhotos were taken which presumably go to a specialist for confirmation – all saving money.

Once again I have been impressed with the thoroughness of Kaiser and how they work to make visits there a pleasant experience, with pleasant people, while they work to improve technology and bring in more skilled technicians. When I went out for my first eye examination there was a demonstration of some kind going on. It was at one (of at least five) entrance to a large parking area, and that was probably the least used entrance at that. Kaiser had one security guard observing at a distance, and there were three union-officer-looking guys in suits observing from about the same distance. The twenty or so people holding picket signs were unintelligible at fifty feet as they chanted “One Two Three Four something or another” and “What do we want? Justice something something.” They carried signs but I couldn’t make out what they said. Of course that was before I got my new glasses, but Roberta didn’t make out what they wanted either. Given the unemployment rate in Los Angeles I am astonished that there is anyone not happy to have a job in a pleasant place to work, and I’ve been unable to find an press accounts of the demonstration. Google shows me there is some kind of ongoing dispute by registered nurses against Kaiser –

I found this

Kaiser Permanente registered nurses across the state will begin a picket Wednesday afternoon, protesting what they say is a staffing shortage that has forced patients to be turned away.

Kaiser officials say that their staffing levels meet or exceed state requirements.

The union notes that nurses from 21 Kaiser hospitals across the region – including the three Sacramento-area centers – will participate in the picket, to happen from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Read more: http://fox40.com/2012/12/19/kaiser-nurses-to-picket-allege-staffing-shortage/#ixzz2IwMgkfgl

But that was for last month. Perhaps this is the same thing. Most of those in the picket line were women about 30 years old, and they may have been registered nurses. The union bosses watching over them were all male and dressed in suits.

But it was all controlled and civilized, and reminded me of Mort Sahl’s description of a strike at Disney, with the artists drawing cartoons of pickets and the supervisors drawing cartoons of strike breakers.

If I seem to ramble a bit about Kaiser there is a point. I conclude from long experience with the Kaiser system that it works. It’s pleasant, the people who work there are pleasant and helpful, and I haven’t had any haggles with administrators: I go there, I make a reasonable copayment for the visit, and that’s that. When they found The Lump in my head I saw a dozen specialists and had 35 sessions of hard X-rays, and once the treatments started I wasn’t even paying the nominal per-visit copayment. I ended up going to half a dozen different facilities, and they were uniformly well run by pleasant people. Even the security guards and parking attendants were pleasant and cheerful.

The problem, I suspect, is that any attempt to clone Kaiser would likely destroy it as well as produce a distorted copy that wouldn’t work as well as the original, and by the time you got to a fourth generation clone you’d be where socialized medicine establishments usually go. I could be wrong on that, of course; but it’s the way to bet. In any event, after more than thirty years experience with Kaiser in Southern California treating me for traumatic injuries, a hand broken while I was on a hike in the Sierra with the Boy Scouts, brain cancer, trips to the emergency rooms for various members of my family, prostate cancer examinations, and a whole lot of preventive medicine classes, I’m sold. I was assured by President Obama that if I like my current health care I can keep it under the new laws that take effect this month. I can only hope.

There is a lot of topical news but it’s hard to rate the significance. We have had the Benghazi inquiries by Congress and have learned little to nothing. What difference does it make whether this was an organized attack (as foreseen by intelligence analysts for the 9/11 anniversary date) or a local reaction to an obscure video that almost no one saw? Those brave State Department heroes are dead either way, and bullying the Administration about why, and why Susan Rice continued to harp the video days after everyone in the White House and Foggy Bottom knew that it was an al Qaeda operation is just mean spirited and an attempt to make the President look bad. It’s just mean.

Meanwhile there are various interpretations of President Obama’s inaugural address, but all agree that it’s a pointer to what will go on in future: either the full realization of the liberal dream, or the destruction of the constitutional republic established in 1789, depending on your point of view. Whatever your opinion, the government is taking over about 15% of the national economy as Obamacare takes effect. Add that to the government’s allocation of GDP and the US becomes far more like one of the European socialist states than the Republic of Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, or Reagan. How far that will go is not so easy to determine, but the financial juggernaut is quite real: if we don’t cut spending or raise revenue, we’ll simply run out of money. Indeed, there doesn’t seem to be a revenue raising solution to the impending bankruptcy of the states, and Federal entitlements can’t go on this way forever.

If a thing can’t go on forever, it will stop.

What happens when it stops?

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free. And freedom has been an elusive thing. Far more humans have lived their lives in some kind of bondage than have been free. The norm is that the strong do as they will and the weak suffer what they must. “To secure these rights” of life, liberty, and property, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. So said the Continental Congress, but it wasn’t true until they said it. The longest lived Republic in human history was the Most Serene Venetian Republic, and it had not long to live after 1776. It was washed away in a tide of Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite! following the events in the public squares after 1789. The world would be made free, and equal, and all that would be carried across Europe on the points of French bayonets; and when it was over there were no Republics nor would be for decades. Except, of course, the Republic of 1789, born from the Revolution of 1776 coalescing in a More Perfect Union to ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

But that was in another country.

At least one news commentator says that Obama’s Inaugural was more important than George Washington’s.

Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. A sentiment that has been around since the days of Sophocles and probably well before. It sometimes seems appropriate.

I have this from a future crystal gazer.

The Americans With No Abilities Act

President Barack Obama and the Democratic Senate are considering sweeping legislation that will provide new benefits for many Americans. The Americans With No Abilities Act is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.

"Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society," said California Sen. Barbara Boxer. "We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability (POI) to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing."

In a Capitol Hill press conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pointed to the success of the U.S. Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. At the state government level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has an excellent record of hiring Persons with No Ability (63 percent).

Under the Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million mid-level positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.

Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that promote a significant number of Persons of Inability (POI) into middle-management positions, and give a tax credit to small and medium-sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.

Finally, the Americans With No Abilities Act contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the non-abled, banning, for example, discriminatory interview questions such as, "Do you have any skills or experience that relate to this job?"

"As a non-abled person, I can’t be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them," said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint, Mich., due to her inability to remember righty tighty, lefty loosey. "This new law should be real good for people like me. I’ll finally have job security." With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Said Sen. Dick Durbin: "As a senator with no abilities, I believe the same privileges that elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every American with no abilities. It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her inadequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation and a good salary for doing so."

The President has warned the Congress that if it will not act, he can issue an Imperial Rescript, excuse me, Executive Order, and given the urgency of gun control he will not hesitate to do that.

"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
George Mason
Co-author of the Second Amendment
during Virginia’s Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788

Actually, converting the entire educated middle class into bondsmen in debt for life to the government will accomplish the result very well indeed. But George Mason had no experience with that level of expertise.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/debunking_the_sandy_hook_debunkers.html

I’m still working on my essay on public education. The first question to ask is what is its purpose? If the just powers of government are derived from consent of the governed, what do those whose wealth is confiscated to pay for public education expect to get form their expense? For that matter, what do those who demand public education as an entitlement expect to derive from their dozen long years of compulsory exposure to classroom after classroom, rule after rule? As children they have no choice. As parents they compel their own children to the grind. What do they want, and are they getting any large part of it from the current system?

“If a foreign power had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightly consider it an act of war,” said the Glenn T. Seaborg in the report of his National Commission on Education in 1983. It is certainly no better now. Why are we subjecting our children to a system indistinguishable from a hostile act?

I’ll try to get a mail bag up tonight. We have a lot of good mail. As ususal.

Kinder Egg Inspectors, conscription, robots, and other matters

By Jerry Pournelle | Jan 20, 2013 - 11:47 pm | Updated: January 20, 2013 - 11:52 pm | Mail

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Mail 759 Sunday, January 20, 2013

Subj: Federal Agencies we can do without: the Raisin Administrative Committee

http://www.thespiritofenterprise.blogspot.com/2013/01/orwell-watch-raisin-administrative.html

>>Did you know that if you grow raisins in the United States, you are

>>sharecropping for the government? …<<

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Hardly needs comment… And we borrow the money to pay for this. Should we?

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

I share your concerns about the political dangers of a standing army; yet I also agree that SAC’s power to destroy civilization should not be in the hands of recruits. How, then, do we reconcile citizen armies with nuclear technology?

Jonathan Schell offers a partial solution in his book, "The Abolition", which proposes that the USA become a "latent" nuclear power; that is, that it dismantle all actual nuclear bombs, but retain(and indeed strengthen) its ability to swiftly build those bombs. We keep the know-how and the infrastruction and the fissile materials, but hold off on building the accursed things unless we need them right away. You could call it just-in-time civicide; like taking the bullet out of the rifle over the fireplace. Nuclear latency is purified deterrence; a way for America to say to the world that we don’t feel like killing a million people today, so don’t make us want to.

I like Schell’s idea, but I think it’s incomplete. It’s too rational, it lacks the aura of apocalyptic histrionics so natural to all things nuclear.

I therefore offer the following modest proposal: Nuclear Blatancy Day. It’ll work like this:

Every Presidential election year, college and high school students across the country submit their bomb designs. The winning entries are cast into metal and chips (but no explosives and fissile materials, of course) and sent to the Nevada Test Range. There the bombs are loaded with plutonium from the armory, and lowered deep underground.

The contestants arrive, and their families, and technicians, and generals, and reporters, and Presidential candidates, and foreign dignitaries. Also on hand are marching bands (pro-bomb) and satirical giant-puppet troupes (anti-bomb). Both groups are welcomed as essential components of the inherently mixed message being sent that day. The Presidential candidates speak blandly of the People’s Bomb; the grandmother from Hiroshima pleads passionately for peace.

The countdown starts. Five, four, three, two, one, zero! Suddenly new craters collapse in the Nevada desert. The marching bands cheer, the puppeteers boo, and the foreign dignitaries look at each other nervously. Technicians announce yields; the winning contestants get scholarships and job offers; and the dignitary from Japan quietly tells the other dignitaries that these Americans are indeed as crazy as they look, so don’t mess with them!

I trust you understand, Dr. Pournelle, that the preceding three paragraphs are satire; but they are a satire that would work. It’s absurd, but slightly less absurd than what already exists. I offer it to you as my fulsome praise, and also my excoriating critique, of America and civilization and the entire human race.

Sincerely,

Nathaniel Hellerstein

Schell wasn’t being satirical so far as I know. For myself I would not care to try to assemble the nuclear weapons after a nuclear first strike took out the plant and much of the infrastructure around it.

I have never been a great fan of MAD, but I was never able to find a way to do away with it. And I continue in my admiration of those young men and women who sat there in the silos day after day including Christmas with the keys on chains around their necks as they waited for that damned klaxon. EWO EWO Emergency War Orders, Emergency War Orders, I have a message in five parts, message begins Tango Xray …

Conscription and service a’ la RAH and more on ITHAKA

Dr. Pournelle,

Heinlein’s discourse on conscription have been mentioned, but I thought we should also mention the kind of service he proposed in _Starship Troopers_. If I remember right, service was voluntary, but the "government" was required to give work to anyone who applied. Military service, in many different corps, was only one option. Citizenship was granted to anyone who successfully completed a single service term.

It sounds as if the recent proposal you cited was similar in some ways to the story. However, it sounds more like a way to grab VA-like benefits for any GS or WG job, rather than a way to self-identify individuals who place society at a high level of importance. It sounds as if we want to expand pensions and not limit the franchise.

I think we do need a legal decision to get changes to the distribution system for all federal government-paid documents. It should require a simple contractual requirement change for all funded study grantees to publish publicly via some acceptable means. It is a wonder to me that this is not in the law already. We need a congressional sponsor with some pull to get it across.

I really thought FOIA covered this. If ITHAKA and its subscribers are in violation, that needs to be shown, probably in court. I don’t know if this circumstance is truly the case, or who could bring a suit.

-d

Mr. Heinlein’s society in which only veterans can be voters would probably not be stable since it would require a bureaucracy to enforce it… Why should I have to go to the trouble of FOIA actions to get access to documents reporting publicly supported research? Particularly since publication costs are generally part of every research proposal…

“His view was that standing armies became independent entities, and transmogrified into mercenaries…

And after that came the professional military, the volunteer forces, and the United States became the world superpower. So far that has not brought about the difficulties Machiavelli prophesied”

—————-

You think not? What I see is the military having to use other methods than the love of one’s country and patriotism to convince people to join. Funds are provided for benefits used for this purpose. Money to attract Soldiers? Is that not a mercenary army?

I can’t say I blame them. It used to be people honored the loyal soldier, now they do not, and the politicians consider them expendable for political purpose.

B

Aaron Swarz was a self-confessed Chomsky disciple, FYI.

<http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/epiphany>

While I deplore the routine prosecutorial tactic of gross overcharging in general, especially for nonviolent offenses; and while I’m opposed to the ITHAKA monopoly on the fruits of publicly-funded research, I don’t have that much sympathy for Aaron Swarz. He strikes me as a soi-disant ‘activist’ lacking the courage of his supposed convictions, once that it wasn’t all fun and games, anymore, and who was willfully naive of how the legal system works (there was no way he’d end up in prison for any large amount of time based upon an initial conviction, much less on appeal), and who settled upon legal representation by an attorney who has a good reputation, but who wasn’t the best selection for this particular set of circumstances, IMHO.

I will admit that this whole sorry episode, and others like it, lead one to the conclusion that the minimization or outright elimination of public prosecution and prosecutors in favor of private prosecution might well be worthy of consideration.

Roland Dobbins

I never met Mr. Swartz and I haven’t spoken to any of his intimates. I am more concerned that there was no trial. I would like to see a good reason for ITHAKA to have this monopoly.

Aaron Swartz — an opposing view

Dr. Pournelle,

I am related to someone who reported recently on Aaron Swartz in a paper for classwork. Her take on his case was somewhat different. The man reportedly was guilty of breaking and entering, wiretapping, and vandalism — the last by locking (preventing the use of) the files by their owners.

After Swartz’ activity was detected and measures were put in place to prevent access, he escalated his efforts while in full knowledge of the penalties if detected and prosecuted.

The ITHAKA service obtains exclusive use of academic documents legally and maintains an electronic library, at no small expense, for institutional subscribers who are mostly the same as the contributors.

Swartz interviews indicated he was less motivated by freedom of information than by grabbing attention for himself. He was indifferent to the cost of his activity to the the lawful users and owners of the information, and had no concern for the direct effect of his actions.

While one should not speak ill of the dead, and he may have had a point freedom of access to government-sponsored information, I’m personally convinced that the prosecution wasn’t excessive. If his legal defense was unsuccessful in reducing the sentence further, he probably should have sought more competent counsel — as you say, he would have found many willing to support that effort.

In my experience, it takes a really small effort to obtain access to government sponsored data via the freedom of information act, and in most cases taxpayers foot the bill for production of that information to the requestor. Swartz attacks were focused on an information outlet with which he had a personal gripe. He was certainly making a poor point the hard way. Perhaps he came to realize this.

-d

Why should it take any effort at all? And I assure you that unless you are part of academia, access to many journals is quite expensive. They are behind efficient pay walls.

Subj: Is there something in Massachusetts that deranges prosecutors?

The recent Aaron Swartz case is not the first time a prosecutor in Massachusetts has run amok. Remember the Amirault case:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281204575003341640657862.html

>>[S]o much testimony, so madly preposterous, and so solemnly put forth

>>by the state. The testimony had been extracted from children, cajoled

>>and led by tireless interrogators.<<

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

This may be the first time since the President took office that I agreed with a quote I saw from his press secretary —

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-unveils-gun-control-proposals/2013/01/16/58cd70ce-5fed-11e2-9940-6fc488f3fecd_story_2.html

“Most Americans agree that a president’s children should not be used as pawns in a political fight,” press secretary Jay Carney said. “But to go so far as to make the safety of the president’s children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly.”

The President’s children ought to have security because they are exposed to greater risks than the average school child and the consequences to the country are greater if something happens to them that takes away his (and of course everyone else’s) attention from keeping the country running.

–Mike

It’s about time people learned to turn the politicians’ own bullshit back on them; when people learn to use courts and laws in this way I suspect we’ll see some changes in how government does business:

<.>

A petition calling for the elimination of armed guards “for the President, Vice-President, and their families” has met and exceeded the previous threshold set by the White House on their We The People petition submission site.

The petition states: “Gun Free Zones are supposed to protect our children and some politicians wish to strip us of our right to keep and bear arms. Those same politicians and their families are currently under the protection of armed Secret Service agents. If Gun Free Zones are sufficient protection for our children, then Gun Free Zones should be good enough for politicians.”

Although it will likely receive only a glib response, the petition reaches its quota just as fervor over a National Rifle Association (NRA) ad pointing out this very same hypocrisy has erupted.

</>

http://www.infowars.com/petition-calling-for-gun-free-zones-for-the-president-vice-president-and-their-families-reaches-threshold/

I’m Joshua Jordan and I support this message! I don’t know about you, but my life is worth more than all the politicians in the world; they think I don’t need guns? Well, I disagree and so does the Constitution; but, since they want to take away guns, let’s take away the guns around them and make them happy.

I’m sure that assassination attempts will no longer occur and politician will be completely safe if nobody has guns around politicians. After all, we can just pass a law and that’s what will happen.

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Solar Prominence

Jerry,

The Solar Dynamics Observatory spies a beautiful prominence in UV. The time lapse video covers four hours

<http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130115.html>

Regards, Charles Adams

Impossibilities in the world.

1. You can’t count your hair.

2. You can’t wash your eyes with soap.

3. You can’t breathe when your tongue is out.

Put your tongue back in your mouth, you silly person.

Ten (10) things I know about you.

1. You are reading this.

2. You are human.

3. You can’t say the letter ”P” without separating your lips.

4. You just attempted to do it.

6. You are laughing at yourself.

7. You have a smile on your face and you skipped No. 5.

8. You just checked to see if there is a No. 5.

9. You laugh at this because you are a fun loving person and everyone does it too.

10. You are probably going to send this to see who else falls for it.

You have received this e-mail because I didn’t want to be alone in the idiot category.

Have a great day. Laugh, and then Laugh and sing "It’s a Beautiful Morning " even when it’s not.

"Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many."

Molly

Robots doing work

Every year seems to get us closer to the reality of needing much fewer people to do work than we have. We’ve seen it in agriculture already where 1% now do several times the work that was done in the 1900s and with vastly increased production. On the other extreme, I’ve seen it in IT where one person can manage hundreds of servers that a couple decade ago would have employed dozens of people. I still can’t get my head around where this is heading in the short term. The collapse of the idea of majority employment?

Matt Murphy

This was once a fairly popular theme among science fiction writers. If we went from a majority of mankind working in food production and service to a very small percentage of them so employed in under a century, how long will it take Moore’s Law to reduce the number of highly paid workers needed for manufacturing to a very small number? The golden age of blue collar middle class has passed and it does not look as if it will come again. A $22,000 robot can do the work that three highly skilled auto workers once did – and do it two shifts a day for nothing like twice as much as it cost to do one shift. That’s on today’s market.

Over time more and more skilled jobs will be done by smart robots. And we do not much speculate on the logic of one man one vote in a nation in which most of the population contribute nothing whatever to the national productivity… Yes, I know, I must be exaggerating. Surely.

In Re Victory

Dr. Pournelle,

Had to look up the article quoted by Col Couvillon (forgive my possible mis-spelling). Found the editorial at http://strategicstudyindia.blogspot.com/2013/01/americas-strategic-stupidity.html

I think your and the Colonel’s observations are correct, but I think the author was taken out of context. While Bacevich may indeed be a U.S. apologist, I think that he was trying to state that faulty strategy — which did not include a military victory — was at least partly at fault for the failure to achieve any particular goals. He unfortunately uses language that appears to place the blame on the troops. I don’t think that is the author’s intent.

Perhaps the language is poorly considered, however, I don’t think that his position is too far distant from your own, or the Colonel’s, on this matter.

-d

This is interesting:

<.>

The U.S. Marine Corps, known for turning out some of the military’s toughest warriors, is studying how to make its troops even tougher through meditative practices, yoga-type stretching and exercises based on mindfulness. Marine Corps officials say they will build a curriculum that would integrate mindfulness-based techniques into their training if they see positive results from a pilot project. Mindfulness is a Buddhist-inspired concept that emphasizes active attention on the moment to keep the mind in the present.

</>

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MEDITATING_MARINES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-01-19-14-32-11

Alan Watts put it best when he described Buddhism and added "and when this gets mixed up in the context of Western ideas, Western science and so on it will do things the Asian people never dreamed of and might not even approve of". I think this article outlines one of those "things" that Alan Watts mentioned in his lecture on the transformation of consciousness. While some might consider it an irony, I am not surprised and this is not the first time someone tried this concept.

In the Heian period of Japan the Sohei lit. "monk warriors"; "fighting monks" raised armies. Interestingly enough, the Sohei were similar to the yamabushi lit "mountain warriors" in origins. Yamabushi are often associated with ninja — and for good reason. Ninja, however, did not raise armies; they undertook intelligence work and covert action. The Sohei had much power, partly because it was considered bad to kill monks. The Shohei were often influencial in Japanese politics and military affairs until just before the Edo period. The closest thing we’ve had in the West to the Shohei are the Teutonic Knights or the Knights Templar. As an aside, Himmler tried to make the SS into something like the Teutonic Knights. Unfortunately for him, the Nazis jailed and/or killed off any esotericist that might have helped them accomplish this as they were afraid of anyone who might have some power they could not control. Most of Himmler’s scholars were deluded and the Third Reich never lasted long enough to create the SS Himmler would have wanted. But, enough of history, let us speak of 2013.

I am most interested to see how this process would unfold with our military. I might have advocated something this when I was younger, but realizing the quality of people available I am concerned at how this will be applied and what the results will be. Also, if the Shohei, Templars, and Teutonic Knights provide a lesson for us, we could see a — if you will — spirit warrior caste of great power and influence. I realize that this "goes too far" because I’m looking beyond the short-term and most people don’t think that you can look beyond the short-term with any degree of accuracy, but I proved such platitudes wrong many times over the years and I did not say this was a certainty — only a possibility and something we might take care to consider and monitor.

Of course, if the Marines apply this concept on a mass scale we would find out if G.I. Gurdjieff’s hypothesis was correct. Gurdjieff postulated that war — he often used WWI as an example — demonstrated an instance of mass psychosis. Gurdjieff asserted that if the soldiers became aware — or "woke up" as he would often put it — they would lay down their weapons and return home to their wives and families.

If Gurdjieff is correct then only certain war fighters would enhance their killing efficiency with this training; such war fighters would constitute the small percentage of humans with no inherent resistance to killing one’s own. This inherent resistance is the major obstacle that prevents war fighters from killing. LTC Grossman’s work on the matter indicates that killing occurs by overcoming this resistance, primarily, through group absolution, demands of authority, social distance, psychological distance, mechanical distance, cultural distance, physical distance, classical conditioning, and operant conditioning. Grossman proved that group dynamics, symbols of authority, distance, and conditioning allow soldiers to deny the humanity of the enemy and kill them. Grossman indicated — through quantitative and qualitative methods — severe increases in kill rates from the Civil War through the Vietnam conflict in a book, aptly titled, On Killing.

I believe that it may be possible to create a hybrid training program that would bypass the "awakening" Gurdjieff might have expected, but I believe it would take more than what I’ve read here combined with what we have in 2013. I believe Grossman’s factors are compelling and that one can use a more sophisticated approach than employed in 2013 to increase killing efficiency and lessen suicide rates through better selection and preparation of war fighters. Still, I think this would work with war fighters that have the constitution for their work. The Marine Corps seems to think — judging by the article — that more self awareness will afford that constitution for all trainees. I don’t believe that, but I do believe that more self awareness will — through weeding out candidates without the constitution for killing — create a more efficient killing force and that is what martial science is all about.

Another interesting part of this development is in elitism. Per capita, very few Americans are or were members of the military. These people already represent a small — one might be forgiven for using the term "elite" — section of society. Military people tend to in better physical and mental condition than civilians and add a superior spiritual condition to this and you’re looking at a very interesting and powerful group of individuals. How will that square with a society that seems more degenerate with each passing day? I think we might do well to encourage — but not require — soldiers and veterans to work with civilians and the community to develop some of the traits and principles learned in the conditions the military imposed on them. I think that would do a lot for our national power as it would help restore a sense of national pride, individual competence, and self confidence. The rising influence of military and former military citizens might alarm some, but it could be a positive and helpful influence on our people from 2013 and on. This could be incorporated in the awareness training discussed in the article. After all, anyone who is aware realizes that they’ve never seen an organism without an environment or an organism that did not have others that looked similar. As Marcus Aurelius put it, "We are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to Nature, and it is acting against one another to be vexed and turn away."

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Jerry

On a lighter side of contemporary computer Security Issues check this URL site out:

Seriously? Google Wants to Go Green Lantern on Us to Replace Passwords <http://technorati.com/technology/article/seriously-google-wants-to-go-green/>

http://technorati.com/technology/article/seriously-google-wants-to-go-green/

Good heavens. Are we to boot our PCs with a ring and an oath aka Green Lantern?:

In brightest day, in darkest night,

I hope my PC starts tonight.

Let those viri trojans try as they might, Beware Google. Green Lantern’s light!

For those who weren’t DC Comic fans here are the full words for Green Lantern’s oath from Wikipedia:

Green Lantern is famous for the oath he recites when he charges his ring. Originally, the oath was simple:

“

…and I shall shed my light over dark evil.

For the dark things cannot stand the light,

The light of the Green Lantern!

”

—Alan Scott

This oath is also used by Lanterns Tomar-Re <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomar-Re> of sector 2813, and Chief Administrator Salaak <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaak> .[21] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Lantern#cite_note-21>

In the mid-1940s, this was revised into the form that became famous during the Hal Jordan era:

“

In brightest day, in blackest night,

No evil shall escape my sight.

Let those who worship evil’s might,

Beware my power, Green Lantern’s light!!!

”

—Hal Jordan/Many Current Lanterns

I read Green Lantern when he first appeared, but he was never one of my great favorites. In those days his nemesis was wood, not yellow. I read lots of comics in the late 30’s and up to the end of WW II, but after that I shifted to science fiction and lost track. My favorite was Captain Marvel, and I was in love with Mary Marvel…

Kinder Egg inspectors

Just caught this article by Mark Stein from The Corner:

Choc and Awe

By Mark Steyn

April 24, 2011 8:55 A.M.

I am looking this bright Easter morn at a Department of Homeland Security “Custody Receipt for Seized Property and Evidence.” Late last night, crossing the Quebec/Vermont border, my children had two boxes of “Kinder Eggs” (“Est. Dom. Value $7.50″) confiscated by Customs & Border Protection.

Don’t worry, it’s for their own safety. I had no idea that the United States is the only nation on the planet (well, okay, excepting North Korea and Saudi Arabia and one or two others) to ban Kinder Eggs. According to the CBP:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY0qsQXwXHo

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/men-busted-canadian-border-illegal-candy-article-1.1117071

Surprise!