Mail 756 Monday, December 31, 2012

Happy New Year.

Still more ‘fun’ with deciphering the ACA

Jerry,

I trust you and yours have been enjoying the most delightful of holiday seasons (or more politically incorrectly: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!)

I am a disabled Vietnam Vet and, as such, am eligible for medical coverage from both the Veteran’s Administration and from Medicare. I presumed that these coverages would insolate me from the requirements of the Individual Mandate of the ACA.

I noticed however, that there was never a direct statement that Medicare and VA Medical coverage made one immune to the requirements of Obamacare. From what I was able to discern, it is clear that neither of these government programs cover ALL of the 10 areas required as "essential health benefits" under Obamacare. I became concerned and attempted to find an official statement on this subject.

When I failed to find such a statement….lord knows it may well be hidden within the thousands of pages of the ACA….I decided to go to the source and called the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). I waded through their phone tree and eventually was placed on hold in queue waiting for a real live person. Eventually I got to speak with a real live person….but was unable to make them understand my question (disappointing!)

My next attempt was to call the office of US Senator Charles Schumer (known locally as "the Hon. Chucky Cheese Schumer". In spite of many attempts to both his D.C. office and to his local offices, I was never able to reach any of his staff nor even voice mail. Eventually, I sent email expressing my concerns. I have now been waiting a month for a response.

Next I attempted to contact my US Representative, Mr. Peter King. I succeeded in reaching one of his local staff to sent me to the voice mail of the DC staffer responsible for health care. Astonishingly, she called me back within the hour! She assured me that I WAS acceptably covered by Medicare and the VA. When I requested that she send me a clear statement of that coverage on the Representatives letter head, she said she would have to do some research but would get back to me shortly.

The following week I received a letter from Mr. King’s office which reiterated the fact I was covered. The relevant paragraph, however, reads a bit like it was taken from a draft of Through the Looking Glass!

It is a long paragraph so I will extract the relevant text:

"The Affordable Care Act requires that…policies….and plans cover a comprehensive package of 10 categories of items and services known as ‘essential health benefits.’ You expressed concern that certain government-sponsored programs…do not cover services in all ten specified catagories. This is correct; <emphasis added>…However, I can assure you that beneficiaries of these…plans will still meet the ‘minimum essential coverage’ requirement."

Hmmmm, sez I, plans that both do not meet the requirements and "…still meet the…requirement." and all at the same time! Mebbe the Red Queen can make sense of that, but not me!

Quite unsurprisingly, my follow-up request for clarification has gone unanswered!

I rather expect to have find the funds to purchase insurance from one of the ‘exchanges’!

Despair may be a sin, but are not all men sinners?

Warm and Holiday Regards,

Larry Cunningham

Welcome to the brave new world. Despair is a sin, but anyone can ask for grace.

Is this a surprise?

 

Clemson University student Nathan Weaver just wanted to put together a project to help figure out the best way to assist turtles in crossing the road. But he also ended up with a peek into the dark souls of some human beings. Weaver put realistic-looking rubber turtles, no bigger than a saucer, in the middle of a lane on a busy road near campus. Then he got out of the way and watched as over the next hour, seven drivers intentionally ran over the turtle, and several more appeared to try to hit the defenseless animal, but missed.

</>

http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/12/27/4507782/clemson-students-turtle-project.html

If the penalties weren’t so stiff, I’ll bet people would run over other people rather than slow down..

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Not really. Of course I am from an older tradition, which accepted that mankind is in a fallen state and requires both effort and grace. Obligations are not a popular topic for thought and attention now.

I’ve got a little list

Dear Jerry,

To the list of folks to fire (like "bunny inspectors") I propose we add "undercover kitty photographers".

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/us/cats-at-hemingway-museum-draw-a-legal-battle.html

Sincerely,

Calvin Dodge

Cutting government

Hello Jerry,

Maybe we should be careful what we wish for:

Bob Ludwick

A guy stopped at a local gas station & after filling his tank, he paid the bill and bought a soft drink. He stood by his car to drink his cola and watched a couple of men working along the roadside. One man would dig a hole two or three feet deep and then move on. The other man came along behind him and filled in the hole. While one was digging a new hole, the other was 25 feet behind filling in the hole. The men worked right past the guy with the soft drink and went on down the road.

"I can’t stand this," said the man tossing the can into a trash container and heading down the road toward the men. "Hold it, hold it," he said to the men. "Can you tell me what’s going on here with all this digging and refilling?"

"Well, we work for the government and we’re just doing our job," one of the men said.

"But one of you is digging a hole and the other fills it up. You’re not accomplishing anything. Aren’t you wasting the taxpayers’ money?"

"You don’t understand, mister," one of the men said, leaning on his shovel and wiping his brow. "Normally there’s three of us: Me, Elmer and Leroy. I dig the hole, Elmer sticks in the tree, and Leroy here puts the dirt back. Elmer’s job has been cut… so now it’s just me an’ Leroy. We’re saving the taxpayers money because now there’s only two people doing the job of three.”

Efficiency is important.

‘The Alabama prison system’s policy of segregating HIV-positive prisoners from other inmates violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, U.S. District Court Judge Myron Thompson ruled this morning.’

<http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2012/12/us_district_court_judge_myron.html#incart_river_default>

Roland Dobbins

Clearly we have too many people working the judicial system.

Bill Whittle doffs his suit and gets down to work spending an hour with a speech that sort of grew on him as he went on with it.

Bill Whittle "Where do we go now?"

http://youtu.be/TuL41ohlfZY

He explores options, even some ugly ones. He does not want to "Never Surrender" because it’s a slogan. He spends time to show WHY this is not a case to surrender even though times for surrender do exist, as General Lee understood at the end of the Civil War.

He explores the problem Romney had selling himself when he clearly had let the left set his definitions for him.

He explores the likely future starting with an explanation for why our revolution and the resulting Constitution reflected societal reality of the time. He explains that, yes, big monolithic government is the model for the industrial age with its big monolithic industries. The model for government follows, with a lag, the model for society as a whole.

Society has changed. It’s no longer monolithic when Fred can sit down to dinner, have an idea, pick up his smart phone, order 50,000 widgets from wherever, and resume eating all in the comfort of the new "Be Our Guest" restaurant/experience at Disney World. (Recommended for this who can make it there.)

The form of government will have to change to adapt to this ultimate decentralization. But it will take time. We’re now a minority. The last election proved that. We must do what minorities have always done in the past, look out for your own. Italians hired Italians.

Jews hired Jews. And so forth.

The video is long. It’s not fine tuned as most of his videos are. It is, I feel, worth the hour I spent watching it and the time I have spent since then thinking about it.

I am not sure he’s entirely correct. There are aspects of the Information Age he has not well considered. (One such is the utter lack of personal privacy that will exist shortly. The only privacy will be in being lost in the multitudes.) These may make his vision not work and the future different from what he’s expecting. BUT, the huge monolithic government model is, as he asserts, already DOA.

{^_^} Joanne

But smart people are not allowed to hire only smart people. What we need is equality. You must hire two incompetents for each competent, and you must pay them all the same. That is called fairness. Then you pay more taxes than those who hire no one. That is called your fair share.

China’s Buying of U.S. Securities

As I may have mentioned, I’m studying for a couple FINRA exams.  During the course of my study, a thought occurred to me.  U.S. government securities are traded on the faith and credit of the United States government, which takes real power from the U.S. government’s ability to tax. 

Why would China buy U.S. securities in such great amounts?  Would it be to put pressure on government to raise taxes; thereby, reducing revenues and productivity as we experienced, historically?  I believe JFK lowered tax rates and found that revenue viz collected taxes and productivity both increased.  Certainly, economic policies in the United States proved this point again and again. 

If China continues to buy U.S. government securities based on the pressures created then China plays a shrewd game.  The hypothesis makes sense, in some sense.  It also, poetically, reminds me of the Opium Wars.  We get them addicted to opium and now they get us addicted to debt…  The more I think about it, the more I think I might be on to something. 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

An interesting interpretation. Of course the US can simply devalue the currency for paying debts abroad, while allowing inflation as a means of taxing those foolish enough to save money.

Hm, nice idea that. But somebody’s already doing it less well,

Jerry

Here is a piece on “the increasing difficulty of actually deploying a new invention or innovation:”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/31/biz_guilds_crush_newcomers/

The title is “Hm, nice idea that. But somebody’s already doing it less well,” and it is a discourse on why when we have innovation we are seeing a slowing of economic growth around the world. He explores the hypothesis that the answer lies in “the increasing difficulty of actually deploying a new invention or innovation.”

Ed

Or “Better is the enemy of good enough”, and maybe even of not quite good enough.

Be Careful Of That For Which You Wish

"Of course what most people want is another law. Once guns are banned, I presume we will have to worry about regulating hatchets and machetes."

Brits have been calling for a ban on pointed kitchen knives for years:

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/british-doctors-call-for-ban-on-long-kitchen-knives-to-end-stabbings/

They’re hell-bent on turning the U.K. into the world’s largest group home for the developmentally disabled.

There is no shortage of people here with the same goal.

Chris Morton

Rocky River, Ohio

And when we disarmed they sold us,

And delivered us bound to our foes…

SUBJ: TSA: They Steal Anything

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210314/Ex-TSA-agent-reveals-epidemic-thefts-passengers.html

Now who would ever have suspected that?

"Although we cannot rule out the possibility that our results are driven by misreporting, our results imply that over the very short run, the death rate may be highly elastic with respect to the inheritance tax rate."

<http://www.cnbc.com/id/100341727>

Roland Dobbins

For some reason, revenues are almost always lower than those who want to raise taxes to get more money predict they will be. One might think this a complicated affair given that legislatures never seem to know it.

Life in the ‘world’s largest democracy’.

<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/UP-rape-victim-raped-by-cops-probing-case/articleshow/17748777.cms>

Roland Dobbins

The framers never thought that democracy was a desirable form of government. We seem to be expierimenting with it now.

“We should be upset. This is a terrible blow to general relativity.”

“In the absence of data, theorists thrive on paradox.”

<https://simonsfoundation.org/features/science-news/mathematics-and-physical-science/alice-and-bob-meet-the-wall-of-fire/>

Roland Dobbins

Better Than Human

Jerry

This guy is looking ahead to robots replacing most people’s jobs:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/12/ff-robots-will-take-our-jobs/

“To train the bot you simply grab its arms and guide them in the correct motions and sequence. It’s a kind of “watch me do this” routine.” Sound like the robots Robert predicted in Door Into Summer, long ago.

If the main prediction is correct, then shall we end up like the people in Fred Pohl’s “The Midas Plague?”

Ed

There are two aspects to economics, production and distribution. Distribution through sheer entitlement has plenty of problems, but if production is simple and efficient — of course so far it never is. But it’s a lot easier to distribute a big pie than a small one.

‘Global warming’ strikes again.

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2252180/US-Weather-White-Christmas-nearly-half-Americans-storm-rumbles-nation.html>

Roland Dobbins

I believe that despite the warnings about how hot it was, the actual temperature in 2012 was about the same as the previous year, and the long flat to cooling trend continues. Probably not for all that long. But the models won’t tell us. Russell Seitz points out that we are getting more reliable data as time goes by.

SpaceX’s reusable rocket lifts cowboy into the air and lands back on its feet,

Jerry

Private industry in the guise of SpaceX has reinvented the reusable rocket hopper:

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/27458/spacex_s_reusable_rocket_lifts_cowboy_into_the_air_and_lands_back_on_its_feet/index.html

I liked your DC-X better, though. This one looks awfully tippy.

Ed

Dr Pournelle

DCX reborn. <http://www.newspacejournal.com/2012/12/24/grasshopper-hops-ever-higher/>

Merry Christmas.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

Nine Carriers at Norfolk

Jerry,

Nine Carriers are at Norfolk. All I can say is wow!

<http://www.readability.com/read?url=http%3A//blogs.defensenews.com/intercepts/2012/12/home-for-christmas-9-flattops-at-norfolk-dec-20-2012/>

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Mail 754 Sunday, December 16, 2012

Training Mass Murderers

Lanza, just like Cho, Loughner, Holmes and the rest, is a creation of the commercial media.

Regardless of their other psycho-pathologies, they were all malignant narcissists, absolutely craving mass attention.

One of them commits a mass murder, seeking attention.

What does the commercial media do? They REWARD him with publicity which would have made the Beatles in their heyday, green with envy.

Crazy isn’t stupid. They take malignant narcissists who would literally KILL for publicity, then when they kill, they give them… PUBLICITY.

I don’t know how big of a stumbling imbecile somebody has to be in order to believe that if you respond to negative behavior with positive reinforcement, you DIMINISH the incidence of that behavior. Why do you think they tell you not to feed bears?

Some conspiracy theorists would say that all of this is to ENCOURAGE these kinds of crimes in order to further an agenda. I say it’s much more likely that the commercial media just doesn’t CARE. This is about MONEY, and despite all of the hypocritical duplicity about "gun industry profits", the commercial media spend more on paperclips in a year than the firearms industry grosses. "If it bleeds, it leads!" And if it needs to bleed MORE in order to prop up the bottom line, that’s just fine with the people raking in the ad and ratings revenues. Like I.G. Farben, their goal isn’t dead bodies… but they’ll cheerfully stampede across those bodies to get to that goal… and it’s plastered with dollar signs.

Chris Morton

Canada’s School Shootings Policy

Recommend we all study Canada’s policy to protect against school shootings. First of all, no mention would be made of the perp. No pictures, no interviews with family, nothing! There is a law against it. Secondly the schools are prepared. Each class can be locked from the inside. The teacher who secures the classroom then blocks up the door’s window if there is one, with a colored sheet that indicated "Secured" or slides it under the door. So law enforcement responding can look down the hall and see the SAFE rooms versus those not so declared. Perhaps your Canadian readers can tell us more.

David Barbee

I recall many years ago, perhaps in 10^th grade, finding in the section on the assassination of a US President a line to the effect: “His name is known, but historians have determined not to publish it. There is no need to add to his notoriety.” I think they were referring to the assassination of McKinley but I am not certain.

Obviously such sentiments were abandoned long ago.

Japan is No Exception

Sadly attacks on schools happen occasionally in Japan as well. I remember one that hit the news a while back and dug up the link of the event on wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_school_massacre

Arondell Hoch

Dear Dr Pournelle,

In Japan, the typical scenario is that of a teenager flunking school exams and stressed out from cram school who snaps, murders his parents with a baseball bat and the commits suicide.

I doubt gun control (or lack thereof) is the issue: Canada has more firearms per capita than we do, but a much lower incidence of violent murder. Culture matters.

There are some studies that show news articles focusing on a mass murderer encourage copycat killers. Perhaps the press should agree to inflict damnatio memoriae to scum like Langa.

–

Fazal Majid

Slinky

Does the top of the falling slinky fall at or faster than any other object dropped in 1g? I suspect:

a. the center of gravity of the entire spring is falling at 1g, b. the tension on the spring is additive to the force of gravity at the top end so it falls faster, and c. the tension on the spring is subtractive from the force of gravity on the bottom end, so it doesn’t move until the c.g reaches it.

Chris Spratt

Falling slinky

That reminds me of a problem we were given in Freshman physics lo these many years ago. What is the tallest brick smokestack that can fall over in one piece? Simplifying assumptions: the smokestack is a right circular cylinder; the shear strength of the mortar between the bricks is zero.

The answer is that at some point on the smokestack, the vertical acceleration will exceed 9 m/sec^2, and the joint will fail at that point. Once you see that, you can calculate where that point is. I’ve long since forgotten the number, though.

Joseph P. Martino

POTUS is making his move to disarm the citizenry concurrently with his purge of the military. The eagerness with which Obama is exploiting the Newton Connecticut massacre to ban "assault weapons" is sickening given FBI Homicide data that shows that only a tiny fraction of young homicide victims are killed with firearms.

Year of incident by Weapon used for United States

Return to selection page <http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/asp/off_display.asp#> Download the tab delimited file Download data <http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/asp/off_display.asp#> Printer friendly version Printer-friendly <http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/asp/off_display.asp#>

Display Options:

<http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/images/tri_red.gif> Count Row % <http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/asp/off_display.asp#> Column % <http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/asp/off_display.asp#>

Selecting:

Age of oldest victim

0 to 5, 6 to 11

Count Firearm Knife Blunt object Personal Other/unknown Total

1980 101 43 45 307 181 678

1981 90 48 84 305 200 728

1982 107 36 68 362 166 739

1983 103 41 51 328 166 690

1984 80 44 51 319 145 640

1985 105 54 53 302 183 697

1986 92 32 55 365 183 727

1987 93 50 51 322 202 719

1988 133 40 63 346 220 803

1989 143 43 37 324 213 761

1990 123 40 45 362 179 749

1991 133 44 44 395 242 859

1992 141 30 64 374 187 797

1993 153 26 55 414 222 871

1994 156 33 39 445 198 870

1995 142 23 47 397 207 817

1996 111 25 50 456 235 878

1997 101 21 47 387 199 755

1998 96 33 55 385 203 772

1999 74 21 70 315 200 681

2000 67 28 67 348 179 689

2001 80 25 40 382 232 759

2002 117 31 35 340 188 711

2003 88 22 48 369 211 738

2004 69 29 57 331 188 674

2005 82 29 54 343 203 711

2006 79 26 53 327 222 708

2007 90 29 53 365 227 764

2008 89 21 60 349 252 770

2009 82 22 60 315 189 668

2010 72 25 61 311 209 678

Total 3,192 1,019 1,663 10,991 6,234 23,099

Suggested citation: Puzzanchera, C., Chamberlin, G., and Kang, W. (2012). "Easy Access to the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports:1980-2010." Online. Available: <http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/> http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/

Data source: Federal Bureau of Investigation. Supplementary Homicide Reports 1980-2010 [machine-readable data files].

James Crawford

And by far the greatest killer of children in the US is the automobile.

Subj: Nassim ("Black Swan") Taleb: Learning to Love Volatility

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324735104578120953311383448.html

I especially liked "Rule 4: Trial and error beats academic knowledge."

Perhaps nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American anti-intellectualism was wiser than we knew! Certainly wiser than we were taught by mid-twentieth-century … intellectuals.

"Rule 5: Decision makers must have skin in the game" is a close second.

I had not previously known the Roman rule, that engineers had to sleep under the bridges they built.

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

I have been reading this book and planned to recommend it. And do not forget Thomas Sowell on intellectuals, many of whom see themselves as The Enlightened and the Rest of Us as The Benighted.

Frack me! UK shale gas bonanza ‘bigger than North Sea oil’

Jerry

“Reports suggest that the UK sits on one of the richest deposits of shale gas in the world. An unpublished but independent estimate of UK gas potential by the British Geological Survey suggests it may be more significant to the UK economy than North Sea oil. Cuadrilla initially estimated the UK has enough gas to make it self-sufficient for 15 years at current consumption rates – but this may be underestimated by a factor of four:”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/14/gaia_violated_by_frackers/print.html

“The combination of fracking and horizontal drilling techniques can be used to unlocked new reserves of exploitable gas. (The combination is also deployed to unlock renewable geothermal energy.) The consequences for the energy market have been dramatic. US gas prices have fallen by two thirds, the country is now self-sufficient on gas – and the United States enjoyed the largest fall in CO2 emissions of any major country as its power generators switched from coal to gas.”

Hmm. Fracking drops CO2 emissions.

Hmm. We’re not going to run out of fossil fuels anytime soon.

Ed

And of course there are plentiful energy resources in the United States if we were allowed to develop them. And with energy you can do anything. See A Step Farther Out…

Climate Report Draft Contradicts Itself

Jerry,

At risk of being the 37th person to send you this:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/13/ipcc-ar5-draft-leaked-contains-game-changing-admission-of-enhanced-solar-forcing/

Apparently the most recent draft of the round 5 IPCC report contains in its chapter 7 an admission that, statistically, solar forcing (as measured by galactic cosmic ray-induced isotope levels in the geological record – solar activity affects GCR arrivals) seems to be a major component of historical global temperature changes, even if the exact mechanism is not yet known. It’s not the actual solar energy levels arriving; those only account for a fraction of the climate changes that strongly correlate with overall solar activity. The section goes on to name solar activity-linked variation in GCR arrival affecting cloud cover levels as a possible mechanism.

The draft’s chapter 8, meanwhile, written by a different group, gives the politically correct version: Their climate model that includes only direct solar energy-level variations ("total solar irradiance") fails to explain the majority of temperature changes since 1980, therefore the unexplained difference must be anthropogenic CO2. (Yeah, right.)

From the above story: "The report still barely hints at the mountain of evidence for enhanced solar forcing, or the magnitude of the evidenced effect. Dozens of studies (section two http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/22/omitted-variable-fraud-vast-evidence-for-solar-climate-driver-rates-one-oblique-sentence-in-ar5/

here) have found between a .4 and .7 degree of correlation between solar activity and various climate indices, suggesting that solar activity “explains” in the statistical sense something like half of all past temperature change, very little of which could be explained by the very slight variation in TSI. At least the Chapter 7 team is now being explicit about what this evidence means: that some mechanism of enhanced solar forcing must be at work."

Three guesses how this contradiction gets resolved in the final version report. Meanwhile, though, the cat is out of the bag.

sign me

Porkypine

Egypt arming for attack on Israel?

Jerry,

The formation of a revolutionary guard personal loyal to Morsi would undermine the power of the Mamaluks.

http://mobile.wnd.com/2012/12/egypt-arming-for-attack-on-israel/

James Crawford=

Or start a civil war. The SS had to have the night of the long knives to get rid of the SA. The Wehrmacht did not intervene.

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

I found myself thinking about the night of the long knives when the Adm commanding the CBG in the Med and the General commanding Africom were relieved for attempting to intervene in Benghazi then Petreus chose to resign in disgrace for having an affair that hadn’t been so secret rather than continue to lie about it.

Hitler had his Brownshirts. Mussolini had his Blackshirts. Obama has his Brown Bra Brigade.

James Crawford

Roman Roads

"What the Romans didn’t do for us"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/mar/16/roman-road-made-by-britons

I don’t like that headline. What the Romans did do was to adopt a local custom, or practice, and make it a normal way of doing things. My historical analysis may be unsound here, but did not the Romans attempt to invade the British Isles a hundred years prior to what the article refers to? Granted it was a failed invasion, I submit that they saw the technology used locally and also after reflection saw that it was a sound and useful technology. Maybe it took them a hundred years to figure out that what one nation can do another can as well (witness nuclear profusion). I think you have often said that once a thing is ‘proved’ to be possible, it is only a matter of engineering to make it feasible. I paraphrase.

The Republic of Rome was adept at conquering other nations and incorporating the subjugated nations’ technology and philosophy. Perhaps it took an Empire to conquer the Brits?

I dunno, I don’t often quote or reference the Guardian, although I do miss one of your contributors who did so…

I just wanted to ‘smack’ that one down, for old time sake.

I raise a toast to Dr. Erwin.

(misspelt of course)

-pate

Brian P. wrote some interesting comments on distributionism and, of course, most of his comments are correct. [http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=11073] One thing you both missed is that socialism, communism, and all the other isms used to define the practice were created to exacerbate problems. These paradigms are designed to do exactly what they do, create a growing underclass and solidify the ruling class. Read Tragedy and Hope by Quigley or any of the other writings on how these political systems actually work to learn more. I do not believe for one second that consequences we observe from these systems are unintended; that’s part of the propaganda. Oops, we made a mistake, let us introduce more lackluster polices to fix it. Ooops we messed up again; we just can’t get anything right. Let’s kill off more dissidents, steal more wealth, and try this new policy, which will make matters even worse. These policies always follow this pattern and it is no more a mistake than when a conman rips you off and pretends he didn’t know it would happen and that circumstances are beyond his control. Through clever propaganda and manipulation of emotions, these systems gain popularity and power. The only remedy to these systems is critical thinking, analysis, and observation as Brian P. did with his letter. It was good of him to write it and good of you to publish it.

Through shrewd application of Hegelian dialectics, it is easy to confuse and mislead even intelligent people with these systems and the reasons intelligent people are misled are two fold. First, the intelligent person realizes he’s smarter than others and so he thinks the answers will come to him with less effort and he becomes lazy and does not want to concentrate fully on the problem, but still offers a half-baked statement about it and others run with that. Second, the intelligent person becomes confident that they are accurate, but confidence does not equate to accuracy and when we use intellectual systems. e.g. analytics, mathematics, it really does not matter how smart you are. A smart person can create new mathematical theorems and scientific theories; you don’t have to be smart to apply what someone else already invented. If you have the discipline and psychological fortitude, you can apply almost any paradigm. Obviously, more discipline and fortitude is need to apply Tensor equations than is required by the Pythagorean Theorem.

Because most people are even lazier than the intelligent members of society, they take the half-baked theories — presented with confidence — by lazy intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals and we get trouble as popularity for lackluster policies rises — consider the latest election. I believe that blaming stupidity or incompetence for our problems is the lazy man’s way out. "There was no plan to do this, he’s just stupid". And then, everyone can feel good about themselves because these people who are conning them are really so much dumber than the speakers are even as the speakers lose their freedoms, their fortunes, and their dignity. I hope to see more letters like those from Brian P.

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Legacy of Daniel Boone

AW&ST 12/10/12: "One of the engineers on NASA ‘s Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle is an accomplished Ph.D. astrophysicist named Catherine Boone. Now working at Ball Aerospace , she helped Lockheed Martin develop a machine-vision system that Orion may one day use to dock with other spacecraft en route to Mars (AW&ST Jan. 9, p. 44). She is also a descendant of 18th century American pioneer Daniel Boone. There is something extremely fitting about one of old Daniel’s offspring helping pave the way into the Solar System. Apparently, it’s a very strong gene."

Steve

–

* * *

"Mad Science" means never asking, "What’s the worst that could happen?"

–Schlock mercenary

Phobos is hollow and artificial.

Jerry,

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/05/you-couldnt-make-this-up-european-space-agency-rumors-mars-moon-phobos-is-an-artificial-satellite.html

Don’t know how this will fit into the GUCT (Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory) I’m working on, but I thought I’d pass it along since as it may interest you…

That is the least goofy url that I could find about it, the UFO sites are a bit farther out with it… Here’s my favorite conspiracy minded one:

http://www.enterprisemission.com/Phobos.html

Lots of nice pictures and a timeline going back to the Viking missions.

BTW, although I don’t put much stock in this sort of thing, but it sure would be cool if it really is artificial and hollow. I think a manned mission there would be the best investigative start to settle the question once and for all… I would actually settle for another manned mission to the moon to settle whether it is actually hollow and artificial. Did you see this: http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20121207/NEWS02/712079882 ?

-p

Doesn’t Richard Hoagland (Enterprise Mission) have some words on the hollow moon of Mars? My problem is that I know many of the people involved in processing the data from Mars, and I just don’t think they’re in on a conspiracy, and I know they’re smart enough that if there were one they’d know. Of course my judgment may be failing, but I thought this back when I was still smart…

APOD: 2012 December 10 – Time Lapse: A Total Solar Eclipse,

Jerry

APOD: 2012 December 10 – Time Lapse: A Total Solar Eclipse:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121210.html

Very cool.

Ed

I think this beats your bunny inspectors:

How Ernest Hemingway’s cats became a federal case The descendants of Ernest Hemingway’s cats – dozens of them – freely roam the writer’s former home, now a museum. In a controversial court case, a judge says the felines must be regulated under federal law.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2012/1209/How-Ernest-Hemingway-s-cats-became-a-federal-case-video

-R

“The exhibition of the Hemingway cats is integral to the Museum’s commercial purpose, and thus, their exhibition affects interstate commerce. For these reasons, Congress has the power to regulate the Museum and the exhibition of the Hemingway cats.”

<http://todaytravel.today.com/_news/2012/12/11/15842617-cat-fight-pits-government-against-hemingway-museum>

By this ‘reasoning’, there is nothing in the land which the Congress cannot regulate. Utter madness.

Roland Dobbins

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…