View 832 Monday, July 07, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

The President of Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) has spoken regarding the SFWA position on the Amazon/Hachette dispute. (See yesterday’s View.)

It hasn’t appeared in public yet so I won’t quote it, but it is a public announcement intended to be read by everyone, so eventually you’ll see it.

My first impression brings to mind the word stonewalling. Far from apologizing for giving an incorrect impress, it asserts that SFWA did nothing wrong and is only supporting authors who have been harmed by Amazon’s tactics. And it informs us that SFWA did not call for a boycott of Amazon. It doesn’t say “not yet”, and perhaps it was not intended as a veiled threat, but why else would one bring that up? Of course a moment’s thought would tell you that a command for a boycott of Amazon is not going to happen unless the President and Board are all suffering from hypoxia (hard to do since they meet Skypishly, not in the same room), but again the question arises, why bring it up at all in a public message?

Mystery upon mystery. It is like watching an episode of Doc Martin, only in this episode Dr. Martin and all his friends have been subjected to nitrous oxide.

I can now reprint this morning’s SFWA release re: the Amazon/Hachette fracas and SFWA’s endorsement of the petition:

SFWA’s support of Douglas Preston’s open letter reflects our concern about Amazon’s tactics in their dispute with Hachette and the way those tactics are impacting writers and their careers. We are, unfortunately, aware that this is not the first time Amazon has used negotiating tactics that have injured writers. To be clear, we are doing this in support of writers (members and otherwise) not, as some have suggested, to support Hachette Book Group and “Big” publishing over self-published and small press authors.

SFWA is a _writers_ organization and we have fought against practices that harm writers, no matter what the source, including “Big” publishing, scam agents, vanity presses, etc. If we are unwilling to weigh in on behalf of traditionally-published authors in disputes with online distributors like Amazon, Nook, and Kobo, what chance do we have of supporting other writers in the same arena?

Even as we are signing on to Mr. Preston’s letter, we have not called for boycotts of Amazon, we have not called for members to stop publishing with Amazon, and we have left our Amazon links up on the SFWA website. We recognize that suppliers and distributors negotiate the terms of their relationship but we hope that both parties can conduct this business in ways that do not punish _the very people who provide the products they both sell._ This is not about a conflict between traditional and independent models of publishing and efforts to frame it as such do more to harm than help the lives of _all_ working writers.

Steven Gould
For the Board

As I said, stonewalling, or doubling down, do not seem to be inappropriate words.  To the best of my knowledge no further explanations from the SFWA officers is forthcoming.

The situation in Ukraine grinds on. The Ukraine forces appear to be regaining control over their eastern territories, and the Russians are not intervening to prevent that. I cannot believe that President Putin has renounced his claims to the Russian speaking Russians in Ukraine, so what is his strategy? I had thought he would have the pro-Russian rebels fall back and consolidate, then offer some kind of deal in which there comes to exist an autonomous region still part of Ukraine but friendly to Russia.  That may yet be the goal.  We can only watch and wait. There is still fighting going on, but so far it’s not city-leveling destruction.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View 832 Sunday, July 06, 2014

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

I haven’t done much this week. I’ll try to catch up a bit now.

I heard today that Bill Gaubatz, the project director for Douglas who built the DC/X, has died. Bill was the engineer who took the DC/X concept and turned it into flying hardware, on schedule, and under budget. He knew how to build teams and get them working, and this without much support from his employer: a reusable spaceship would not be as profitable as selling more and more expendables, and Douglas already sold expendables to the the Air Force. Still, they did bid on the project, they put a good man in charge of it, and they got out of his way.

I’ve told the DC/X story before, but last time I told it was when I had just missed my last chance (as it turned out) to see Bill Gaubatz again. I’ll repeat it here:

I missed the 20^th Anniversary of the DC/X which happened in New Mexico over the weekend. A lot of people wanted me to come to it, and I’d have liked to go, but the logistics couldn’t be arranged. We’d planned to get together with Phillip and the grandchildren on this weekend a long time ago, and while the DC/X was important and it sure wouldn’t have happened without me (well, me, Max Hunter, and General Graham were the ones who went to VP Dan Quayle then the Chairman of the National Space Council –

Rather than make that a long parenthetical I may as well tell the story. The Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy came about in a curious way. Back in August of 1980 before the election there was a planetary encounter or some other event at JPL, and G Harry Stine and BJO Trimble were there. Mrs. Trimble was the Star Trek fan club activist who had pretty well sparked the big push for another season of Star Trek when it was being considered for red or green light by the network, Harry was an old space enthusiast, consulting engineer, pilot, and science fiction writer, and I was an SF writer with some political experience. We planned a small conference to be held at Larry Niven’s house later in the fall to see what we could do to promote the space budget in the incoming administration, which we thought would likely be Reagan’s. I’d done some briefings when Reagan was Governor and I was in the professor business. None of this was important and it wasn’t worth making notes about.

But then Reagan won the election, and he asked General Schriever to prepare a paper for his incoming administration: a space and defense policy. At this point it gets complicated. Back in 1968-70 I was the junior author of a book called The Strategy of Technology. The senior author was Dr. Stefan T. Possony, then a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford. We had worked together on some other projects, and Steve was very much my mentor. The Strategy of Technology was a succès d’estime, meaning that it sold reasonably well, but got really good reviews and was interesting to the people we had written it for – it eventually was a textbook at all three service academies in one class or another, as well as in the War Colleges, and there are copies used in some senior military seminars even to this day. (The principles are still valid but all the examples are from the Cold War or Seventy Years War era when the Soviet Union with its 26,000 nuclear warheads and enormous delivery capacity was the main threat to the US. Those who remember that era will understand; but there is now a generation that doesn’t remember the USSR and its Strategic Rocket Service and Tsar Bomba and the rest of it. But I digress.) Anyway there was a third author to The Strategy of Technology, Francis X.Kane, Ph.d., Col. USAF. As an active duty Air Force officer Duke didn’t want his name on the book, which was quite critical of some US policies. Kane had been Director of Plans for General Schriever, and General Schriever asked Duke to do the transition team space plan that Reagan had asked for. Kane obtained his Ph.D. in political science from Georgetown University where his principal advisor was Professor Stefan T. Possony. Possony had been in the Pentagon during much of WW II, then to Georgetown, and thence to the Hoover. (Possony got his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna about the time I was born; he was active in the Schussnig government which opposed – with the help of Benito Mussolini – Hitler’s bid to take over Austria.  Obviously that opposition failed. When Austria fell, Steve fled to Czechoslovakia, and when that fell he fled to France where he was an advisor to the Air Ministry – until 1940, when he fled to unoccupied France and managed to get passage to Oran and thence to the United States.  Steve was fond of saying that the Gestapo had his library – three times.)

Steve and Duke asked me if I could help get this space plan together. It would need a meeting of a number of aerospace people, and a good working environment. The Nivens had already committed to a space promotion conference, and agreed to expand it. It expanded beyond even his home’s ability to provide guest space for all those who were coming – about 40 all told – but Marilyn Niven with some volunteers said she could handle the meals, and the house was certainly large enough and had the right atmosphere for a space conference. We reserved a nearby motel for sleeping rooms; everything else would happen at Niven’s house in Tarzana.

I started inviting people mostly by phone, with the promise of an opportunity to be persuasive at a level where persuasion might have some effect. We had a pretty good turnout, starting with Buzz Aldrin, George Merrick who was manager of the Shuttle program at North American, Dr. Gould from North American, Max Hunter, General Graham, Gordon Woodcock from Boeing, George Koopman, several other military officers, Phil Chapman, Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy, Lowell Wood from Teller’s people, Steve Possony of course, a number of science fiction authors I thought would be useful including Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Dean Ing. Gary Hudson and some space entrepreneurs. Art Dula. Phil Chapman. BJO Trimble was recording secretary and in charge of building a fan base. I’m naming names off the top of my head, and I will forget a lot of them. SF publisher Jim Baen. More active duty military people none of whom were officially there. We worked all weekend and produced a paper for the transition team, then at the President’s request we started in on a plan for after inauguration at another meeting. The President read the full reports, which strongly recommended Strategic Defense. In 1983 he made his Star Wars speech. It included several phrases from the Council reports.

Anyway, after that frantic period between November 1980 and January 1981 we were asked to continue to work on space policy, and we were all space enthusiasts. I was chairman, largely because I had found someone willing to host the conference and Niven sure didn’t want that job. We did some good work in the next eight years. Then, in 1988, we had a meeting at which Max Hunter said “Maybe it’s time to revive the X Programs.” There’s a long story in that. Anyway, a much smaller group still under the name of Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy (well, I had to call it something; Newt Gengrich thought it was a pretty good name) devised the SSX project, which General Graham, Max Hunter, and I took to DC just after the inauguration. Mr. Bush had pretty well cleared all the Reagan people out of the White House, but he couldn’t fire VP Dan Quayle, and Quayle was ex officio the chairman of the National Space Council and also had been “the respected junior Senator from Indiana” even in the New York Times until the day he was the Republican VP nominee after which, in under 24 hours, he became a bumbling philandering fool in much of the media; but in fact he was a pretty sharp cookie. He had control of a fair amount of the Strategic Defense Initiative research budget. The SSX Project was 600,000 pounds Gross Lift-Off Weight. There wasn’t enough money in the SDI funds to built that, but there was enough to fund a scale model to test many of the vital concepts of Single Stage to Orbit, and Mr. Quayle was able to get that project funded after having RAND and some other people reevaluate the feasibility of Single Stage to Orbit – which most of the aerospace industry had decided was impossible. There were also questions about control at low speeds and low altitudes. DC/X would test those questions and others. But this isn’t an essay on X projects – for that see my Access To Space.

Anyway, after that Mr. Quayle passed the SSX proposal to the National Space Council which got DC/X funded. Bill Gaubatz made the ship happen, on time, under budget, not paper studies but flying hardware, and I’d have liked to have been at the 20^th Anniversary. And of course the whole story is more complicated than this; but it would not have happened without Dan Graham, Max Hunter, and for that matter me. So I’d love to have gone to the Anniversary. But I’d rather have spent the weekend with my grandchildren.

What I would have said had I been at the anniversary is that the SSX Project as proposed by the Council back in 1989 would still be an excellent X project. The 600,000 GLOW is still just about right, and with new structure materials and vast improvements in computers, gyros, avionic – both in capability and weight savings – SSX might actually make orbit. Max Hunter used to say “We may not make orbit with SSX but we’ll sure scare it to death.” And we would learn just what we would need to make a fleet of ships that were savable and reusable, and which could fly several missions a month, at essentially fuel costs. That’s access to space. One day we’ll do that. Not by government built ships; but government does have a role, as it did in development of aircraft. Not building airplanes but in funding research. And X projects are still one of the most valuable tools for developing technology. But then I’ve said all this before. If I’d have gotten to the meeting I’d have said it again.

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/ssx-dcx-star-wars/

I note that over the years many of the participants in making DC/X possible have died. Those include Robert Heinlein, Harry Stine, Duke Kane, Steve Possony, Dan Graham, and I’m sure many more. I hope they’re all waiting to welcome Bill Gaubatz to the old space warriors club.

The big flap started last Thursday with a letter to all Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) members from SFWA President Stephen Gould:

Dear SFWA Member,

Author Douglas Preston has written a protest/response to Amazon about its recent behavior in its negotiations with Hachette Book Group and is inviting co-signers in support of this message. I think it strikes a pretty good balance between respectful and accurate and I will be signing it as an individual and as President of SFWA. In addition, the Board had decided to endorse this message and we invite members to co-sign as individual authors (by emailing Preston at djpreston@me.com .)

Steven Gould

President, SFWA

This was followed by a storm of protests from independently published writers who believed that SFWA had taken the side of traditional publishers of which Hachette is one the Big Five, against Amazon, which is the major publisher of independently published works, fiction and non-fiction, science fiction and fantasy and all other genres, and incidentally also the book seller of nearly half the printed books sold in these United States.

The story was told that this was a deliberate insult by SFWA aimed at independently published writers, and worse, it comes in the midst of a long and drawn out debate within SFWA over whether to admit as ‘professional writers’ those whose only credentials are self-published worked. One of the people who brought up the issue of admitting self-published writers to SFWA was me, and the case I used as illustration was Dr. Jennifer Pournelle, my daughter, whose book Outies, a book written (with permission) in the universe of The Mote In God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle has been a top selling science fiction book for decades, and remains popular (and very readable I would say, but then I would, wouldn’t I?). When Jenny wrote the book she solicited offers from publishers and received several, all with generous (for first novels) advances, but terms that gave the publishers the lion’s share of eBook rights so long as the book was “in print”; and since electronic books never go out of print, that means the life of the copyright. She did some calculations based in part on Mote sales, and some expectation the author’s name would attract some attention and sales, and decided to self-publish the work, again with our permission. The bottom line is that the book earned more in a year than the advance offered by the publisher, and she still owns all the eBook rights; and it’s still selling, as indeed it ought to since it’s a pretty good read. Not as good as Mote, say I, but then I’d say that, wouldn’t it?

I pointed out that this ought to qualify as a valid credential for joining the Science Fiction Writers of America. She was offered publication by a major publisher, and has earned more in self-publication than she was offered, and she retains all her rights in the book, and surely that’s professional? And since she has been the publications manager for a major California university, she’d be a pretty darned valuable member. My point was that if SFWA is the organization of those who write and publish science fiction in America, she blooming well qualified, and so did a number of other writers out there.

SFWA has dithered over this for two years. Since we were in the process of moving incorporation from Massachusetts (a rather bad place to incorporate a national organization because of their laws about face to face annual meetings) to California (not my recommendation but better than Mass.) and that didn’t get finalized until last month, we couldn’t have changed the by-laws anyway, but we could have been ready to do it when we legally could, but we didn’t and hence I say dithering. The current schedule is that the officers will vote on the matter at the end of August, and then put it to the membership, and it will all be settled by the end of November, and I still call that dithering; but we are slowly making progress.

But with that record of inaction on the matter comes the action last Thursday, without notice and without consolation with anyone, not past presidents, not the committee that has been studying admission of independently published writers, not any readers, not a Ouija Board or a spirit medium in an attempt to make contact with founder Damon Knight, nor anyone else. Just suddenly the President, apparently authorized by a vote of the board, puts the organization on record as endorsing that petition; and this has been interpreted by nearly everyone in the Independently Published Author community as a slap in the face.

Not so, not so, at least one past president, and at least one board member, has said; but of official word from President or Board comes there none as of this afternoon, and the professional science fiction and fantasy writers who have been independently rather than traditionally published have begun declaring their unhappiness over this. I can’t really blame them, but I do wish they would wait a bit before believing that SFWA wanted to insult them. I doubt that was the motive.

But that has taken up some of my time this weekend, and probably shouldn’t. I would better have used my time writing something here, or working on several projects I have going including one with Niven called “Story Night at the Stronghold” which takes place a couple of years after Hammerfall for those familiar with Lucifer’s Hammer (and if you aren’t you are missing one whacking good story). I doubt I have persuaded anyone, and I am chagrined that the Masters of SFWA have not acted at least to issued a clarification of what they meant by endorsing that petition, and stating that they are not taking sides in this commercial dispute but protesting the tactics of one side, Amazon . I would also like them to protest the tactics of the other side, the traditional publishers, who want to lower royalties and payments to authors, yet like to be thought of as the authors’ friend.

As to my own experience with Amazon, a reasonable part of my income now comes from eBook sales of my backlist (and the collaborations with Niven). Amazon pays much higher royalties than the traditional publishers, and pays them monthly, not every six months for the period ending six months ago.

Anyway it’s dinner time, and if you’ve heard anything about this flap, it really ought to be a tempest in a teapot, but I can well understand independently published authors some of whom are making considerably more per month than some traditionally published SFWA members make in a year feeling a bit miffed about this restriction on just who is professional and who is not.

More another time.

‘The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s most accurate, up-to-date temperature data confirm the United States has been cooling for at least the past decade.’

<http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/06/25/government-data-show-u-s-in-decade-long-cooling/>

——

Roland Dobbins

‘The levels of Antarctic sea-ice last week hit an all-time high – confounding climate change computer models which say it should be in decline.’

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2681829/Global-warming-latest-Amount-Antarctic-sea-ice-hits-new-record-high.html>

————–

Roland Dobbins

And more and more data accumulate to show that whatever the climate is doing, we don’t have a model to explain it.  Perhaps there won’t be a Krakatoa or Tambora volcano in the 21st Century.  But what if there is?

Subject: : Does anyone today remember the cost of freedom????

This was just one beach.

.http://thefallen9000.info/

William Ellern

Some still remember.  Some have forgotten.  And increasingly, more never knew.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

Still more chaos here, and all over. Leaks everywhere, many of them felonious, although of not much merit other than the breaches in security. As I write this, all the discussion seems to be more resentful of Trump’s income than anything else; he paid more taxes, apparently, than the Clintons or Mr. Obama, or Romney; not a great surprise.

The Cabinet seems to have vacant seats; since Bunny Inspectors work for Agriculture as I understand it, and that’s one of the vacant Cabinet posts, I suppose we’re stuck with them for at least a year, which probably means forever.

File 770 announces: PRATCHETT BUSTED. The BBC has the story.

A bronze bust of Sir Terry Pratchett has been unveiled ahead of plans to install a 7ft (2.1m) statue of the author in Salisbury, Wiltshire.

It was created by Paul Kidby, who illustrated Sir Terry’s Discworld novels, before his death in 2015.

Well deserved. I am sure he would have appreciated that.

Noonan link around WSJ pay wall

Dr. Pournelle,
FYI, WSJ is covered by a pay wall, so the Peggy Noonan column you linked isn’t immediately available. She also self-publishes, however, and the column also appears at http://www.peggynoonan.com/. Worth a browser bookmark.
Cheers,
-d

I have several messages telling me that direct links to Wall Street Journal articles end up outside a pay wall. I always provide the exact title, and as I understand it, if you Google that you get to read what it hits. If someone knows otherwise, please tell me. I also know Googling the exact title always brings up other places you can see the article. You can cut and paste the title to Google – oops, I now realize that will carry the link too; I’ll stop doing that. But generally you can read the articles free if you want, although it may take a bit of patience.

“Wiretaps” Versus Database Access

Jerry,

I’ve noticed it’s often not well understood what official “wiretaps”

actually involve in 2017. This gets in the way of understanding the current brawl. Can’t have that!

First, it’s been a while since most “wiretaps” actually involved someone going into a phone-wires cabinet and physically clipping on a wire-leads “tap”.

Law enforcement “wiretaps” generally involve taking a warrant down to the local phone company and having them intercept the relevant traffic via minor reprogramming of their switching computers.

Or sometimes, these involve setting up a “Stingray” fake-celltower intercept device nearby.

Either way, they accomplish the same end as an old-fashioned wiretap – recording all traffic to and from a particular device (or devices) that happens after the “wiretap” is set up.

An NSA (National Security Agency, or for its first several decades “No Such Agency”) “wiretap” is very different.

Americans, perhaps fortunately, are crap at keeping secrets. We’ve know for several years now that (along with hoovering up everything they can from the rest of the world) NSA is recording and saving “metadata” on pretty much all domestic calls. From and to what device, when, and how long – that’s officially been recorded and saved in a central database these last ten years or more.

What’s not official but is a poorly-kept secret – Americans, secrets, crap – there are many, many public clues – is that they quite probably also record and save in that database many, if not most (if not all) of these calls’ actual contents. Plus also pretty much all non-voice data communications. (Hi, guys!)

In theory, all this is in support of foreign intelligence gathering plus (under the famous FISA warrants) keeping tabs on foreign agents inside the US. In theory, only communications where at least one end is non-US are fair game to look at.

Everything else just gets swept up as a side effect and officially never used. But, the database exists.

Now, the government in its wisdom did decide that US citizens deserve some privacy protections in all of this. These aren’t applied before the fact – they collect just about everything – but rather after the fact, in terms of who can legally access NSA’s vast all-calls database, what they can legally ask for, and what they’ll then be given.

(It was direct access to this database that Obama expanded from NSA-only to sixteen different US agencies just before he left office.)

Meanwhile, official government wiretapping of an opposition Presidential campaign would be political nitroglycerin. Yet for months we were seeing story after story allegedly based on leaks of info from exactly such wiretaps, and nobody was picking up on that aspect.

Until, that is, this President tweeted that his campaign was wiretapped by the previous Administration, forcing focus onto exactly that.

Ever since, we’ve seen the organizations legally allowed access to this NSA database running for cover: One by one denying stoutly that *they* ever processed any such properly authorized “wiretaps”, AKA NSA database searches, of the Trump campaign.

Which leaves two possibilities: All the many leak-based news reports of Trump-related wiretaps were pure malicious fiction. (Some of them probably were. But all of them? Some of the alleged facts included certainly sounded like they’d come from wiretaps.)

Or, someone was doing NSA calls-database searches outside of normal properly authorized channels. Which, given what’s in it – everything – should be deeply disturbing to everyone.

Which brings us to today’s news: A claim that Britain’s GCHQ (their equivalent of our NSA) also has access to this NSA all-calls database, that they occasionally do off-the-books illegal-by-US-parties US searches as favors for the US government, and that this might be where the Trump campaign wiretaps actually came from.

http://www.dailywire.com/news/14394/bombshell-fox-news-sources-say-obama-used-brits-john-nolte#

Me, I’m not sure I believe it.

Oh, it’s highly plausible that GCHQ has such a deal, and does such favors. That sort of thing has been rumored for a long time, and Brit and US intelligence have been scratching each other’s backs since WWII.

But any sane GCHQ spook would recognize a US request to wiretap a major US Presidential candidate as political dynamite, and kick it upstairs to a political level where it would presumably die a traditional British politely noncommittal foot-dragging death.

I think it far more likely that the NSA’s database was being tapped into outside official procedures by the same sort of rabidly partisan US bureaucrats who carried out the IRS conservative targeting.

Only the NSA likely has far better monitoring and recording of who accessed its data than the IRS seems to. These hypothetical partisan bureaucrats might well still be identifiable. Hence this current bit of what looks to me like misdirection?

Worth investigating, I’d say.

Mind, even if I’m wrong here, either way, someone high in the previous Administration would have been coordinating the targeting and leaking of these wiretaps. And either way, it might be possible to track them down too.

interesting times

Porkypine

I make no doubt that President Trump will attempt to get to the bottom of this, using both career government agents and others. Felonies have not only been committed but boasted of, and I am told this irritates him. It’s called Rule of Law; reverence for the Law was eloquently pleaded for by Lincoln, not least in a Disneyland address by a live action statue for many years (quoting a real speech, of course). It was elementary civics when President Trump was growing up.

CIA/NSA “stealing” Russian malware

to use malware, you have to put a copy of it on the targeted computers. As soon as any targeted computer is analyzed, whoever does the analysis has a copy of the malware and can decompile it to see exactly how it works.
So OF COURSE the CIA/NSA/etc have copies of Russian malware. So does every other spy agency, and all of those agencies have copies of the CIA/NSA malware as well. If it’s any good, they will adapt it for their own use (why reinvent the wheel after all). And this lets them fool people who are stupid enough to say “the Russians were known to use this malware at some time in the past, so the Russians must have been the ones to use it this time”
Security Professionals have been saying this ever since the ‘analysis’ of the DNC hacking was released.

– –

But of course…

Did you know there’s an ATF National Firearms Examiner Academy?

Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed eCollection eComments Requested; Extension Without Change of a Currently Approved Collection; Application for National Firearms Examiner Academy, ATF F 6330.1

Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed eCollection eComments Re…

The Department of Justice (DOJ), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), will submit the foll…

R

I did not know that, and I doubt many others do. Perhaps someone will tell Mr. Trump

You sound like Heinlein’s ‘rational anarchist’ / Oxenlock / Pneumonia vaccinations…

Jerry,

Regarding your March 13th post:

Good discussion! You remind me of Heinlein’s ‘rational anarchist’ (The Prof) in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. I wonder if most social problems in this modern age might be expressed as too many ‘oxen’ at risk of being gored. The status quo cannot get a needed ‘tune up’ because influential oxen owners will ‘fight to the death’ to maintain the oxen-protection system — and their very oxen are ‘the bigger economic guns’? To coin a new word from ‘gridlock’, perhaps society is in ‘oxenlock’? <g>   I suspect that oxenlock eventually leads to systemic collapse or rebellion… or perhaps a partial ‘pancake’ collapse into a kind of disguised feudalism.

Pneumonia:

If you haven’t already had one, it might be prudent to ask your doctor about the two multi-bacteria pneumonia vaccines available. One inoculates against 13 strains, the other appears to be a superset of 23.

Stay healthy! The nation needs more ‘rational troublemakers’!  Watch out for those ox horns, though!  <g>

Regards,

-John G. Hackett

Thank you for the kind words, but I am reluctant to accept the label of “anarchist” no matter how modified. I believe good government is a blessing; it is also rare. When I taught senior level political science, I used C. Northcote Parkinson’s Evolution of Political Thought as a major text; it was then fairly easy to obtain, and covers the subject fairly well. Anarchy does not seem to work except in very small communities. The test of government is when there are large numbers of disaffected inhabitants, and there is change. Ours took place in 17878. Two years later the French tried a different approach.

Most people prefer a Napoleon to utter discord, even if they would not normally support him. Our English forbears brought over the son of the King they had beheaded to reestablish the Monarchy; they were fortunate to get him.

Real government growth and healthcare reform

Dr. Pournelle,
In case you missed it (as I did), last month George Will summarize (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/big-government-sneakily-gets-bigger/2017/02/24/70cb52d2-fa07-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html) a Brookings paper (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/02/13/ten-questions-and-answers-about-americas-big-government/) by John J. DiIulio Jr. DiIulio asserts that government funded bureaucracy has grown 3.5 times since 1961, despite directly employing approximately the same number today as back then.
IMO, that growth is in operations and not acquisition, especially DOD purchases, where I suspect the growth is even greater and less efficiently executed.
I do not know if the figures include the growth of government-financed industry, such as the huge growth of medical “insurance” and health care provider services companies, which has accelerated tremendously since the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
As an aside, I prefer ACA over the term Obamacare, since it has obviously been really Uncle Teddy’s Dream Care (which makes a poor acronym), and the other term seems to transfer some of the last president’s glamour to the program, an attribute that should be ignored. Best the two be separated. And since a stated goal of ACA was to make health care universally affordable and not to reduce costs, it can only be regarded as immensely Iron Law successful: Costs and the bureaucracy to administer the program are increasing at a rate that is out-of-control.
In service to the thought about your future essay (and to punish a deceased equine even more thoroughly) I ask why ACA should be replaced at all? An overdue reform of Medicaid (which has not been replaced by ACA) could provide health care for the lowest income citizens and repeal of ACA without a replacement would immediately lower the rate of spiraling costs.
Cheers,
-d

Explicitly denying that illegals are entitled to health “insurance” would help too, but “insurance” with no rate adjustments for “preexisting conditions” is not insurance at all; it is a mere entitlement requiring someone else to pay your bills. That is a free good, and the demand for free goods has no real limits.

Your SFWA Experience Subject

Dr. Pournelle –
The SFWA section of the Mar 13th Chaos Manor was probably the best I’ve read of your posts.
I’ve encountered the upsetedness you mention towards the end and, usually, it comes from being unable to refute what is being said or is a symptom of being uncomfortable at having long-held beliefs shown to be invalid and being unable to come to terms with that invalidity.
My arguments against federal healthcare have been mostly met with “General Welfare” counters. Thing is, that healthcare check is written to cover the expenses of an individual. Individual is not General. Therefore, the General Welfare clause in no way covers federal healthcare plans.
I suppose the Commerce Clause could be, he said smirking, “liberally” applied to cover doctor’s expenses, if, perhaps, the doctor is reaching across a state line in order to perform an examination. I suppose a doctor with his office at Four Corners might be especially subject to federal controls.
But, if his limbs do not leave one state for another, the Commerce Clause could, in no way, predominate.
In my humble opinion, of course.
Unfortunately, it seems that the concept of “Black Robes Confer Infallibility” dictates otherwise.
Best wishes to you and your wife for continued improvement and protection from future concerns.
Cam Kirmser

There are many reasons to question the Constructional authority to establish entitlements. The federal government was not established to entitle the citizens; it can protect them from state tyrannies but giving them free stuff was not its purpose. There is a difference between building Interstate roads and distributing goodies and free stuff.

An aborted discussion by professional authors

All your discussion on the SFWA forum of government control of our lives is rather ironic — considering it is the Science Fiction Writers of America! Didn’t anyone bring up Jack Williamson’s 1947 novella, “With Folded Hands …”? Later expanded into “The Humanoids”?
Although it’s been a few decades since I read the novel, I still vividly remember the Prime Directive: “to serve and obey and guard men from harm.”
Reading Williamson’s comments from a 1991 interview is rather chilling considering what we have experienced with the rise of progressive politics and social justice warriors:
“…this experience produced in me a deep seated distrust of benevolent protection. In retrospect, I’m certain I projected my fears and suspicions of this kind of conditioning, and these projections became the governing emotional principle of “With Folded Hands” and The Humanoids.”
*SIGH* Unfortunately it is no longer benevolent…
WS

Williamson’s With Folded Hands” ought to be required reading for anyone programming robots.

Aspirin for stroke prevention: the story of Dr. Craven and his discovery

Intrigued by your off-hand comment that “A Glendale dentist had noticed that patients who routinely took aspirin had fewer strokes than those who didn’t”, I went a-Googling, and found this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1894700/

Thanks again for all you do!

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Fascinating. Tells the whole story quite well.

Starship Troopers Redux

Dr Pournelle,

In case you haven’t heard. A new version. Reportedly following the novel this time. 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/starship-troopers-reboot-works-943882

‘Starship Troopers’ Reboot in the Works (Exclusive … http://www.hollywoodreporter.com The bugs are coming back. Columbia Pictures is rebooting Starship Troopers, the 1997 sci-fi film directed by Paul Verhoeven. The studio has tapped Mark Swift and …

Matthew

It cannot possibly be worse than the original. Ginny hated that one.

Materiel Moving to East Coast!

I just saw videos of hundreds of tanks moving to the East Coast, loaded on trains — tan in color. I also saw hundreds of tan in color APCs in a video along highway 90.

Also, Russia is building up jamming capabilities in Crimea and we’ve moved B1s, B52s, and drones into South Korea in preparation.

I looked into it, and it seems that we know what units the materiel came from and where it is going and it seems that it is, indeed, going to Poland. Unless we experience mysterious delays, I think we can rule out domestic action:

<.>

U.S. soldiers offloaded scores of combat vehicles from ship to shore Sunday at the massive port here, pressing forward with one of the largest U.S. force movements in Europe since the end of the Cold War.

Some 2,500 pieces of gear belonging to the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, including Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, are bound for NATO’s eastern flank, making a 6,000-mile journey from Fort Carson, Col.

</>

https://www.stripes.com/news/poland-bound-us-tanks-roll-east-in-military-signal-to-russia-1.447977

Also, Japan is heating up and the Philippines has some confusion about the Chinese ship in it’s waters. The Defense Minister said it’s a threat and their president seems to think China is their friend and says that he agreed to have the ships here and that he was notified in advance and he doesn’t want to fight with China and he wants the money

they promised… He’ll get neither, I’ll bet. I doubt China will

pay much and I doubt China would find much of a fight without a real navy to meet them.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

We are sending a fairly large armed force to Poland. I fervently hope that President Trump is smart enough to avoid actual war with Russia. Actually, I am pretty sure he is. You can’t invade Ukraine or Russia with a few brigades, and both President Trump and President Putin know it.  It’s a show of force, but who it is intended to impress is not clear.

CIA Empowered by Trump?

Alright, I don’t understand this. Maybe you read this WSJ article:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-gave-cia-power-to-launch-drone-strikes-1489444374

This is the same CIA that is all over the news. This is the same CIA that seems to be leading the charge against Trump — or at least Bremer loyalists at CIA.

Why would you disempower the Pentagon and empower a bureaucracy that can’t keep it’s most secret secrets secret? Then again, the Pentagon

hasn’t been doing so well in Iraq and Afghanistan. Inter alia, WWII

took less time to fight and win but we can blame that on policy makers. CIA’s screwups, however, cannot be blamed on policy makers.

I’m not sure what the thinking is here; can you help me out?

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

No.

UN Funding Cut “Draconian”

Alright, I skipped dessert to come write this email because I just had to share this laugh:

<.>

State Department staffers have been instructed to seek cuts in excess of 50 percent in U.S. funding for U.N. programs, signaling an unprecedented retreat by President Donald Trump’s administration from international operations that keep the peace, provide vaccines for children, monitor rogue nuclear weapons programs, and promote peace talks from Syria to Yemen, according to three sources.

The push for such draconian measures comes…

</>

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/13/white-house-seeks-to-cut-billions-in-funding-for-united-nations/

I stopped reading at this point. It is now “Draconian” that an elected official does not see value in spending my taxpayer dollars on the problems of foreign nations through the United Nations? It’s Draconian that we can make our own decisions about how we spend our money and if we choose not to spend it on people who want it then we’re evil?

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Health care matters

Dear Dr Pournelle
First, fair disclosure. I was brought up as a typical post war baby boom kid in London. The “right” to health care, in the form of the NHS is so deeply programmed into me that rational arguments are hard to accept, even now. “Give me the boy and I will give you the man” Back in the fifties, everything was available on NHS. Dental, Optical, vaccinations, pretty much everything. I have watched it being gradually eroded by successive UK governments with dismay. Of course today it is a shadow of what it once was.
Now, that said, I am generally supportive of your arguments. But for one thing, best put by Dr Asimov regarding robotics. “A robot may not harm a human being, or through inaction allow a human to come to harm” (I think that’s about right) The second cause is the clincher. In your somewhat Ayn Randian view of things, if a doctor sees a bum knocked over in the street obliged in any way to help him? My feeling is “of course he is” You may or may not agree.
Best wishes to you and your missus,

David

“Of course, today it is a shadow of what it once was.”

Yet there have been all these advances in medical science.

Political Humor for Today:

From a political humor mailing I got today, this one stands out my favorite:

 

 

Phil

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.