Daily Archives: May 8, 2012

Fermi question; decivilization trends; flesh markets; Charlemagne and Akbar; and more

  By Jerry Pournelle | May 8, 2012 - 5:59 pm | Updated: May 8, 2012 - 11:38 pm |
Comments Off on Fermi question; decivilization trends; flesh markets; Charlemagne and Akbar; and more

Mail 723 Tuesday, May 08, 2012

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Is intelligence a genetic mistake?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/07/intelligence_and_bad_gene_copies/print.html

A paper “finds that a gene dubbed SRGAP2 has, during cell divisions, been incompletely copied three times in human evolution: once around 3.4 million years ago, and again 2.4 and 1 million years ago. The gene in question is associated with cortical development.”

“The researchers also find the timing of the mutation suggestive (although not conclusive): one of the partially-copied genes seems to arrive in the human genome at around the same time as modern humans began to supplant their hominid predecessors.”

Ed

Carl Sagan used to speculate that one answer to Fermi’s Question – “Where are they?” – is that when a race gets intelligent enough to go to space it will have nuclear power and other such sources of energies of mass destruction – see McPhee’s The Curve of Binding Energy – and will be unable to control everyone who has access to weapons of mass destruction – and will decivilize and destroy itself. That’s why there are no aliens landing on the White House lawn.

I have always thought that humans developed intelligence because we were fortunate enough to have dogs as partners. They use their forebrains to smell intruding enemies, leaving us free to use ours to develop smarts.

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Our lives are being sold in the name of political idealism — again:

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69 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have sent Barack Obama a letter expressing their concern that a new international treaty currently being negotiated would essentially ban all "Buy American" laws.  This new treaty is known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and it is going to be one of the biggest "free trade" agreements in history.  Critics are referring to it as the "NAFTA of the Pacific", and it would likely cost the U.S. economy even more jobs than NAFTA did.  At the moment, the Trans-Pacific Partnership includes Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore.  Barack Obama is pushing hard to get the United States into the TPP, and Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, Canada, Japan and South Korea are also reportedly interested in joining.  But quite a few members of Congress have heard that "Buy American" laws will essentially be banned under this agreement, and this has many of them very concerned.  You can read the entire letter that was sent to Obama right here.  Unfortunately, the leaders of both major political parties are overwhelmingly in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, so the objections of these 69 members of Congress are likely to fall on deaf ears.  The Trans-Pacific Partnership will accelerate the flow of American jobs out of this country, and meanwhile our politicians will continue to insist that they are doing everything that they can to "create jobs".

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http://www.infowars.com/is-obama-negotiating-a-treaty-that-would-essentially-ban-all-buy-american-laws/

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

The question of Free Trade vs. selected protectionism is complex and bitterly debated. We will probably reopen the debate here. Lincoln once famously said that if he bought a shirt from England, he got a shirt, possibly at a bargain, but the money left the country. If he bought it from New England he got the shirt, the money stayed home, and could be taxed. Obviously the situation is more complex than that, but Lincoln understood that. Unprotected industries seldom survive starup. On the other hand, over protected industries generally grow stale and inefficient – look at Detroit in the 1950’s. Or the history of the steel industry.

One thing seems clear to me: if you put in a lot of expensive regulations without some tariff, you cannot compete with those who don’t face the regulations – especially if they have bought your production technology.

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Tax loophole costs billions – 13 WTHR Indianapolis

http://www.wthr.com/story/17798210/tax-loophole-costs-billions

4 Billion dollars in tax fraud. Worse than bunny inspectors.

How truly good. Hardly a surprise of course.

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Markets for human flesh

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I believe you once stated that unbridled capitalism would lead to a market in human flesh. It appears you were not mistaken .

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57428878/south-korea-cracks-down-on-human-flesh-capsules-from-china/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2140702/South-Korea-customs-officials-thousands-pills-filled-powdered-human-baby-flesh.html

Of course, thousands of babies are aborted or die soon after birth in the land of the one-child policy. I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone decided it was a shame to see all that material go to waste.

The irony that China is not, technically, a capitalist country is of course not lost on me.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

This is neither the first nor the last. Welcome to the future.

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‘The world could not get enough of Mussolini until he teamed up with Hitler and the Nazis.’

<http://takimag.com/article/red_flags_and_a_red_rose_nicholas_farrell/print>

Roland Dobbins

Mussolini made the trains run on time and actually built much of the railroad system. He was a socialist. Generally socialism requires a command economy. Mussolini was admired by many including FDR and Huey Long (who understood him quite well). Argentina is still recovering from Peron who was a would be Mussolini – as is Chavez. John Stuart Mill once said that a society unable to govern itself must settle for a Charlemagne or an Akbar if they are fortunate enough to find one. Some would add Mussolini to that list, but what you are more likely to get is a Castro, Peron, Chavez…

McAfee founder raided in Belize by gang-busting police

My organization has had similar experiences in third world countries … but mostly in Africa.

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/04/mcafee_busted_belize/

McAfee founder raided in Belize by gang-busting police

Claims political persecution and dog murder

By Iain Thomson in San Francisco <http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2012/05/04/mcafee_busted_belize/>

Posted in Business <http://www.theregister.co.uk/business/> , 4th May 2012 18:31 GMT <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/04/>

John McAfee, retired founder of McAfee Antivirus, has had his Belize laboratory raided and his dog shot during a dawn raid by thirty officers of the local police Gang Suppression Unit.

At 6am on Monday morning the officers with a warrant stormed McAfee’s laboratory, which researches ways to use bacterial communication to fight disease. In a statement <http://edition.channel5belize.com/archives/69892> [1] to local station Channel Five, McAfee said police smashed open unlocked doors, handcuffed the 12 employees and "murdered my dog in cold blood."

"This is clearly a military dictatorship where people are allowed to go and harass citizens based on rumor alone and treat them as if they are guilty before any evidence whatsoever is obtained," he said. "It is astonishing, it is beyond belief and I intend not to let this stand. I will not stand idly by to let this happen to me."

The police claimed that the facility had unlicensed firearms, and McAfee claims the correct documents were all handed over, but after the raid a single firearms certificate was missing and he and his staff were left handcuffed in the compound for 14 hours. It took copies of the original certificates and the intervention of the US embassy to get him released, but his passport was seized.

McAfee claims that he was approached by a local politician who asked for a donation to his campaign. He refused. McAfee has spent millions on local health and police programs, but has not wanted to get involved in politics, he said.

"I am an old man, I am sixty-six. I have a fair amount of money and not much to do. So I spend it where I think it will do good. And I don’t ever invest in politics," he said. "I don’t donate to any political party; I don’t have any political affiliations. I think politics is foolish for a private citizen like myself to engage in — the winning party, you never get your money and the losing party, you’re on the outs."

McAfee originally started researching the Brain virus as an intellectual exercise, before marketing code <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/07/in_computer_disease_there/> [2] to handle the first malware by pioneering shareware. He eventually started McAfee before selling it to Network Associates and retiring to study yoga, while still investing in technology and research.

Of course you must expect this sort of thing if you put your trust in princes. But who would have taught McAfee that?

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With this announcement, I expect the AGW doomsayers will increase their strident rhetoric by several decibels.

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/04/greenland_the_glaciers_are_ok/

Greenland glaciers not set to cause disastrous sea level rises – study

Another blow for hippy doomsayers

By Lewis Page <http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2012/05/04/greenland_the_glaciers_are_ok/>

Posted in Science <http://www.theregister.co.uk/science/> , 4th May 2012 11:24 GMT <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/04/>

US government funded scientists have measured the speed of glaciers in Greenland as they move down to the sea over the past ten years, and discovered that – while the glaciers have speeded up somewhat – there’s no indication that this will mean major sea level rises.

"Observed acceleration indicates that sea level rise from Greenland may fall well below proposed upper bounds," write the boffins, who are based in Seattle and Ohio.

There’s a lot of interest in Greenland’s glaciers, as opposed to the rest of the Arctic ice cap, as they rest on solid land and thus – if they should all slide off – sea levels would rise seriously around the globe. Just a few years ago, the fearmongering hippies* at Greenpeace were bandying <http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/greenlandmelting170206/> [1] a wild figure of seven metres about, adding:

That’s bye-bye most of Bangladesh, Netherlands, Florida and would make London the new Atlantis.

In the real world, scientists had thought that – if the glaciers accelerated faster and faster as some models predicted – melting Greenland ice might cause 19 inches of sea-level rise by the year 2100. Other scenarios pointed to a lower figure, of four inches. Combined with melting from the Antarctic and mountain glaciers around the world – though many of these latter don’t appear to be melting at all <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/16/himalayan_karakoram_glaciers_gaining_ice/> [2], according to recent research – this could still mean greater rises than the normal 6-7 inches as seen in the 20th century. <clip>

Of course sea levels were much lower when much of the Northern Hemisphere was under kilometers of glacial ice. The Persian Gulf was marshland…

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Fred, on education

Fred nails it again.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Enstupidation.shtml

Al Perrella

Yes, I covered that in View, and thanks. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=7235

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NUIverse

"The amazing NUIverse astronomy application by Dr. David Brown puts the cosmos at your fingertips like never before."

http://www.flixxy.com/nuiverse-astronomy-application.htm

Quite something!

Andrew.

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Sable has hunted gophers on that hill for all of her eight years, and today she caught one

So… did she offer to share with the leader of her "pack" ie- you?

John

I hadn’t thought about it, but yes. She was of course astonished that she caught it, but clearly she is programmed to kill them quickly without thinking about it. It’s not as if we have any shortage of gophers, although the rattlesnakes are keeping them a bit in check. The West Nile virus has far worse than decimated the crow population, and the crows haven’t thinned the latest rattlesnake hatch. Of course there is always an ecology. I’d rather have crows and more gophers than rattlesnakes, but that’s just my convenience. The Nature Conservancy bought up the hills to take them out of the development market, and the cuts in state budget keep the ranger population down, so we’re seeing natural development in the California scrub hills – and without fire. For a while. Of course eventually there will be a fire they can’t control.

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Jedi Jerry –

I’m sure others have brought your attention to this: dinosaur flatulence may have warmed the Earth –

http://news.yahoo.com/gas-dinosaur-flatulence-may-warmed-earth-160634516.html

And here I thought beans and onions were Cenozoic.

Ed

Jerry

A better description of the dinosaur flatulence scenario:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/07/dinosaur_flatulence_warmed_earth/print.html

Ed

I remember many years ago being part of a briefing in which Possony told Reagan that much “greenhouse warming” was caused by “the flatulence of cows.” I have never actually worked the numbers on that. And how many dinosaurs were there? Surely not as many as people and cows now?

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Climate Wars: The Heartland Billboard Fiasco

Long, long ago, on a billboard far, far away :

http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2012/05/umpire-strikes-back.html

Russell Seitz

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fake minorities in academia, who would have thought it?

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/all-fall-down/?singlepage=true

Phil

I know a genealogist who is doing very well in constructing ancestries that include privileged minorities…

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Warnings: Malware on line, and Enstupidization in the Schools

  By Jerry Pournelle | May 8, 2012 - 3:12 pm | Updated: May 8, 2012 - 3:57 pm |
Comments Off on Warnings: Malware on line, and Enstupidization in the Schools

View 723 Tuesday, May 08, 2012

clip_image001 A MALWARE WARNING from a long time subscriber: clip_image001[1]

Malware warning – NCH software "Doxillion"

Jerry,

A warning for your users, the default windows application search when trying to open up a .wps file leads to malware from "NCH software". It purports to install doxillion software converter which on the face of it appears legit and since microsoft’s own application search listed it, you might think that it is in fact legit. In reality, it doesn’t really do anything worthwhile but now opening almost any data file will lead to a pop-up saying that you need a converter update from NCH doxillion so please click here.

I’m 60 minutes into rooting it out of my registry since microsoft program remover doesn’t come close to removing the damage done, and I’m probably going to have to do a system restore or restore from backup since it has altered document opening/conversion settings for nearly every application on my computer (including itunes features for converting between sound file formats).

This is badly destructive and poorly behaved, and microsoft is part of the problem since the automatic application search feature links to this (instead of the correct microsoft word document converter which works fine) and windows doesn’t offer up a way to undo the damage caused without rolling the system back to a restore point created before the installation.

So, my fault for trusting a microsoft "approved" solution, but your readers might be saved a lot of hassle by a warning to treat this as the worst kind of malware.

Oh btw neither Norton nor Microsoft security essentials nor msie’s site screening feature offered any help. And CCleaner wasn’t able to completely root it out of the registry either, the damage was so widespread.

Sean

I have not experienced this and with luck never will, but be careful.  BEWARE.

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As usual, Fred cuts through the euphemisms and gets to the point in his latest essay on education.

I wonder what purpose the public schools serve, other than to warehouse children while their parents work or watch television. They certainly don’t teach much, as survey after survey shows. Is there any particular reason for having them? Apart from their baby-sitting function, I mean.

Yet public schools remain very popular, and people are willing to tax themselves (and raise inordinately on others) to “support education” and “support the schools.” Of course this all became inevitable when the Supreme Court in its infinite wisdom declared education – something never mentioned in the Constitution or its amendments – as a federal entitlement, rather than as something provided by citizens for whatever reasons appeal to them. When schools are funded by local property owners who also elect the local school board, you get one kind of school; when “education” becomes an entitlement and is paid for by the state (on the basis of attendance, not results) you get quite another.

For my first eight years in grade school, we had about 20 students to a grade and two grades to the classroom. Capleville school was in the middle of nowhere and my classmates were farm children brought in by school bus. In my case the school was about a mile and a half from my house, but the school bus route wandered all through the country east of Highway 78 picking up farm kids. What they learned in Capleville consolidated was pretty standard for Tennessee. The math instruction was arithmetic and pretty well stopped at 6th grade. English literature included what was standard fare in those days, Ruskin, Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake, Longfellow, that sort of thing. There was world history, Tennessee history, US history, and in 5th grade as I recall mostly European history; I remember that because there was a textbook with a picture of something medieval or renaissance (I doubt that we were taught the difference) and the village idiot, a girl about 14 still in 5th grade, had copied the caption to a picture in the history textbook and read it aloud as her writing assignment.

Fred continues

Schooling, sez me, should be adapted to the needs and capacities of those being schooled. For unintelligent children, the study of anything beyond minimal reading is a waste of time, since they will learn little or nothing more. For the intelligent, a public schooling is equivalent to tying an anchor to a student swimmer. The schools are an impediment to learning, a torture of the bright, and a form of negligent homicide against a country that needs trained minds in a competitive world.

Let us start with the truly stupid. Millions of children graduate—“graduate”—from high school—“high school”—unable to read. Why inflict twelve years of misery on them? It is not reasonable to blame them for being witless, but neither does it make sense to pretend that they are not. For them school is custodial, nothing more. Since there is little they can do in a technological society, they will remain in custody all their lives. This happens, and must happen, however we disguise it.

And that is where I disagree with him. I don’t recall anyone at Capleville who was in misery over schoolwork. Everyone in my classes – gathered from farms all around, there being no more than a couple of hundred families in Capleville itself – could read, and all of them except me learned something. I suppose I learned something too – I would never have read most of the items in our readers if they hadn’t been assigned – but mostly I was on my own. I had the Britannica at home and a pretty good memory, so I often knew more about anything brought up for class discussion than the teachers did, and mostly I learned that this wasn’t always a good thing – adults don’t really appreciate being corrected by ten year olds in sixth grade – and that I hated penmanship classes. And that what you learn from Captain Marvel comic books isn’t very good science, but the notion of an intelligent worm setting out to conquer the earth can be interesting.

Moreover, in my eight years in grade school I didn’t know anyone who couldn’t read. Plenty who didn’t really understand what they were reading, but even the village idiot could read in the sense that she saw words and pronounced them, even though she didn’t see why reading the caption to a picture (The man and the lady are playing chess, a popular game in those times) would be thought amusing to students who had seen that in their history lesson book a week before. Incidentally, the girl in question got pregnant at age 16 and married an Italian prisoner of war who worked on the farm her parents owned, and when I last heard of her she had two children and had inherited the farm.

The point being that the farm owners in the Capleville consolidated district were presumably satisfied with the school. I don’t really know, but I don’t recall any contested school board elections. I think the local general store owner was one of the school board members.

But Fred’s depiction of many schools as sheer hell for bright and stupid pupils alike, and not much use for all those in between is I gather fairly accurate for most of the Los Angeles Unified School District. I happen to live near one of the LAUSD flagship schools and in a neighborhood of mostly behind the scenes movie people – I expect there are more employed writers in Studio City than in any other square mile on earth. Our local school serves us well and people all over the city try to find ways to get their kids into it. There are other decent schools in LA. Alas, Fred’s horror stories apply to a lot of it.

And his conclusion:

What is the point of pretending to teach the unteachable while, to all appearances, trying not to teach the easily teachable? The answer of course is that we have achieved communism, the rule of the proletariat, and the proletariat doesn’t want to strain itself, or to admit that there are things it can’t do.

In schooling, perhaps “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” isn’t a bad idea. If a child has a substantial IQ, expect him to use it for the good of society, and give him schools to let him do it. If a child needs a vocation so as to live, give him the training he needs. But don’t subject either to enstupidated, unbearably tedious, pointless, one-size-fits-nobody pseudo-schools to hide the inescapable fact that we are not all equal.

As I have said, repeatedly, the best way to be certain that no child is left behind is to be certain that no child gets ahead. If you reward schools for attendance and nothing else, then try to modify that by demanding that all the students get over a very low bar, you can predict the result: all the effort will be spent on those who would fail without it. Resources won’t go do bright kids, nor will they go to the average students who could greatly benefit from it. It will go to those below normal and they’ll get just enough to get them over the bar. And of course the unions will insist that there are no incompetent teachers. There never are.

For all its floundering around with the notion that every kid is entitled to a world class university prep education, the Gates Foundation has made one key discovery: you can get about 100% improvement in any school simply by firing the worst 10% of the teachers in it. Don’t replace them, simply get them out and distribute the others into the remaining classes, even if you have to go to two grades to the room. Get the dullards out of the school teaching business and things will get better. Of course twice as good as what we have is pretty awful, but it’s something.

But the only systematic solution to the ‘education problem’ is to go back to transparency and subsidiarity. Let local school boards run the schools, and let them be elected by the people who pay for them. That way there might be some justification for thinking of the schools as ‘investments.’ So long as they remain subject to a central bureaucracy, the Iron Law will see to it that many bright kids, supposedly entitled to a world class university prep education, find themselves sentenced to Hell.

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More later, but we have a virus warning.

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