A mixed bag of mail

Mail 695 Sunday, October 09, 2011 

innovate v legislate from 1989!

Here’s a little article on US competiveness from 1989 by a strange fellow named Jerry Pournelle in Infoworld 1989.

http://books.google.com/books?id=IToEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PT47&ots=UccgJWdMYK&dq=%22What%20man%20has%20done%2C%20man%20can%20aspire%20to%20do.%22&pg=PT47#v=onepage&q=%22What%20man%20has%20done,%20man%20can%20aspire%20to%20do.%22&f=false

I was still in college, reading this and the other trades in the library…computer at the time was Mac Plus w/ external 20 GB SCSI drive.

I guess we’ve all been strolling down memory lane due to Steve Jobs passing.

It’s all been amazing.

Jay R. Larsen

Still reads pretty good…

Penumbras and emanations.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/secret-us-memo-made-legal-case-to-kill-a-citizen.html?&pagewanted=all>

Roland Dobbins

This doesn’t really need comment. The Constitution is not a suicide pact; but arbitrary power is a dangerous thing.

Letter from England

So Romney’s Mormonism is attracting criticism from the right wing church <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/poll/2011/oct/08/mitt-romney-mormonism>. It’s not especially surprising, given what happened during the Second Great Awakening. There’s no war like a war between brothers. Look at the schisms in the Disciples of Christ, a relatively moderate group <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Church_(Disciples_of_Christ)>.

Venus has an ozone layer. Most people are unaware that the best evidence for life elsewhere in the Solar System is atmospheric data from Venus. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15203281> <http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21021-venus-has-an-ozone-layer-too.html>

The UK Government has been stealing from pensions for a decade. Now it’s beginning to bite.

<http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2046634/SUNDERLAND-ON-SATURDAY-Pension-deficit-disorder-QEs-hidden-danger.html>

Harry Erwin PhD

—

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? (Albert Einstein)

Once you begin to rob pension funds, it’s hard to see where to stop.

Dr Pournelle

Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is available for Kindle. I downloaded the sample, but the entire sample is taken up with introductory comments. Thus, the comments defeat the purpose of the sample. I cannot tell if Hayek is worth my time.

Do you recommend this book?

Hayek’s Road to Serfdom is one of the books that everyone ought to read. On The List of One Hundred, for certain. More like the list of fifty. Yes, by all means read it.

Rand Paul Supports Your Argument

You wrote — several times — that you would cut 1% of the budget as part of a comprehensive plan to get our act together.  Rand Paul supports this policy in an email he sent:

"One penny out of every dollar. That’s all that needs to be cut from our bloated federal government each year for the next seven years to balance the budget.

*   The Penny Plan allows Congress each year to decide which one percent to cut unless they fail to act. Then, one percent of EVERY program is cut, automatically, by law. No exceptions, no waivers, no escape clause.

*   The Penny Plan limits spending to 18% of GDP after the 7 years. That number is important because it is the historic revenues levels of the last 40 years. That means the Penny Plan will ensure our budget STAYS balanced.

*   The Penny Plan turns the liberals arguments inside out. It is easy to explain – how can anyone possibly be against balancing our budget if all it means is we cut ONE PENNY out of every dollar each year?"

Your will is done; the matter is a talking point in national discussion.  Social Security and Medicare are two, major concerns I see during my research. 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Clearly I agree.

Occupy Wall Street Are Organizing A Nationwide Boycott Of Banks

http://www.businessinsider.com/occupy-wall-street-are-organizing-a-nationwide-boycott-against-banks-2011-10

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

And inviting in the labor unions. It’s very odd out there.

The FTL Opera Results

Jerry,

There is a good article in The Register about the Opera FTL results. Some of the reader comments are worthwhile too. You may find it at <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/06/opera_and_general_relativity/>.

John Edwards

Jerry

Can general relativity explain the OPERA neutrino result?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/06/opera_and_general_relativity/

“CERN’s decision to release data about its “superluminal neutrino” experiments at an early stage is providing the world with a rare insight into the process of scientific peer review. Another small step in that process in relation to the fascinating OPERA results asks whether general relativity can be called in to help explain the results.”

The article draws attention to a letter. “Author Carlo Contaldi, a reader in Theoretical Physics at Imperial College, London, is particularly interested in how the OPERA setup accounts for correcting GPS timing to provide a universal time coordinate (UTC) that’s the same for CERN and Gran Sasso, where the neutrinos originated and were detected, respectively. . . .

“the OPERA experiment employed a travelling Time-Transfer Device (TTD) to calibrate the difference in time signals at each receiver. We assume this device to be a transportable atomic clock of sufficient accuracy [15]. The TTD constitutes a classic moving clock synchronisation conundrum in relativity,” the letter states.

“He notes that the experimental setup introduces three relativistic time distortions that need to be corrected in analyzing the apparent time-of-flight of the neutrinos: time dilation resulting from “moving the TTD through a non-uniform gravitational potential”; a “Doppler-type effect” resulting from the TTD’s velocity with respect to Earth’s “rotating frame of reference”; and finally, errors due to “the rotation of the Earth as the TTD travels to its destination”.

“The most important of these, Contaldi writes, is the first – the effect of non-uniformity of gravity on the TTD. Since “the time differences the result hinges on are extremely small”, even trivial details such as whether the TTD was transported by car or by air could potentially change the synchronization between the two ends of the experiment.”

“Usually, peer-review looks opaque to non-scientists. The general public often learns of a research result after a paper has been accepted by a journal – and therefore after the peer-review process is completed (and most often, only because the journal decides to throw some bones at the general media). As examination and analysis of the OPERA experiment proceeds, however, the public is getting a fly-on-the-wall view of peer-review at work. Condaldi may be right or wrong; OPERA may survive this examination, but fall at some other hurdle; a new physics might emerge, or not. Whatever the result, giving the public a ringside seat as academics rake over the OPERA results is already looking like a win for science. By the time OPERA is either settled or falsified, we’ll have had our most detailed demonstration of why science works.”

Ed

Harry Reid Nukes the Senate

<http://takeaction.pollingprecinct.com/emk/open.php?M=4873015&L=75&N=2090&F=H>

<http://takeaction.pollingprecinct.com/emk/link.php?M=4873015&N=2090&L=2229&F=H>

Fellow Conservatives:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) fundamentally weakened the United States Senate yesterday in a desperate attempt to block a vote on the President’s stimulus bill.

Using a simple majority vote, Reid used the "Nuclear Option" to change the rules of the Senate so senators cannot offer amendments. In the future, senators will only be able to modify legislation if Harry Reid agrees to it.

Harry Reid changed the rules of the Senate because Republicans planned to force a vote on President Obama’s stimulus plan. The plan is so unpopular that it was going to be defeated by Republicans and Democrats when it came up for a vote. This would have embarrassed the president so Reid and the Democrats just changed the longstanding rules of the Senate to block it. You can learn more at RedState.com <http://takeaction.pollingprecinct.com/emk/link.php?M=4873015&N=2090&L=2230&F=H> .

The Senate is supposed to be the "World’s Greatest Deliberative Body". That means debating, amending, and voting on legislation — all things Harry Reid has sought to avoid during his tenure as Senate Majority Leader.

Folks, we’re teetering on tyranny. We must elect a conservative majority in 2012 to stop this madness. <http://takeaction.pollingprecinct.com/emk/link.php?M=4873015&N=2090&L=2229&F=H>

This latest attempt to ignore the rules and force bad legislation on the American people is alarming, but it’s not that surprising. Democrats have been ignoring the U.S. Constitution and blowing through its stop signs for years.

Republicans can protect their rights in the Senate but it requires 41 Republican votes to keep the Democrats from cutting off debate. Unfortunately, too many Republicans lack the courage to stand together for the principles of freedom.

The only way to take our country back is to elect true conservatives to the U.S. Senate. We need principled leaders who care more about defending our freedoms than their own political careers.

Respectfully,

Jim DeMint

United States Senator

A political letter, but the incident it refers to may be important.

Spengler’s take: Wall Street Protestors Have Met the Enemy and It Is They:

http://pajamasmedia.com/spengler/2011/10/06/wall-street-protesters-have-met-the-enemy-and-it-is-they/?singlepage=true

He begins the essay: “America is the land of opportunity, and never before the great housing bubble has a Ponzi scheme drawn such a wide base of support and benefited so many people. This was the most democratic scam in history, and if you got in on the first half of it, you’re still better off. The big losers were not homeowners, but the bankers. A quick look at the numbers shows how misinformed are the protesters running around Wall Street. Instead of picketing the bankers, they should pair off and picket each other. I ran through the numbers recently in an Asia Times Online essay. Here’s the story of the People’s Ponzi scheme in a nutshell:”

And on. It’s choice.

Ed

All true. My house is still worth considerably more than ten times what I paid for it in 1968. But when the government injects money into the housing market it drives up the prices. Comes the bubble. One big Ponzi scheme. And of course in most places that means an enormous increase in the “value” meaning the taxes, driving fixed income people out of their houses. Fortunately we have Proposition 13 in California or I could never afford the taxes on this house…

But do note that the Goldman Sachs didn’t do too badly out of all this. And somehow the Toxic Asset fund didn’t retire the toxic assets…

Devil’s Mountain: NSA’s Abandoned Cold-War Listening Post,

Jerry

So here we are – a Russian transmitter and an American listening post – Devil’s Mountain: NSA’s Abandoned Cold-War Listening Post.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/teufelsberg/?viewall=true

Ed

Einstein vs the ‘kooks’

Hello Jerry,

"Without that observation all the speculations about relativity are fairly idle talk: as Russell Seitz reminds me, most physics professors have a peach crate full of well reasoned refutations of Einstein’s theory of relativity sent by smart people, and there’s not a lot of point in reading them because there’s no need for a new theory: what we have works to cover the data we have."

The first thing to remember is that I am in no way qualified to judge the arguments of relativity vs ‘Alternative Theories 1 through N, where N is large’.

That said, I did do a bit of reading on the ‘Einstein Plus Two’ link that you provided. It was noted that a large number of experiments that confirm a theory does not prove that the theory is correct but a single data set that contradicts a theory is sufficient to falsify it.

One set of experimental data that supposedly contradicts relativity is the aberration of binary stars. Specifically, binary stars of roughly equal mass rotating about a common center of gravity with relatively short orbital periods. Relativity (supposedly–remember I am not qualified to pass judgement) predicts about an order of magnitude more aberration than that actually measured by astronomers. The measured aberration is that predicted by Beckman ( http://www.k1man.com/f39.pdf ).

There are a few other examples, which I am equally unqualified to judge. Other people are however and at least a few PhD professors have commented favorably on Beckman, who himself was a PhD college professor.

I also note that it is apparently routine in the physics community to refute a theory questioning relativity on the grounds that it was proposed by a ‘kook’, whether or not it successfully accounts for known experimental data. How do we know that the individual questioning relativity is a kook? Because his theory questions relativity. It has become a bit like the ‘Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Caused By CO2 Emitted By Civilization’ theory in the climate science community. Alternate climate theories are dismissed because they are proposed by individuals who are not bona fide climate scientists. What does it take to establish your climate scientist creds? Unquestioning support for the CAGWCBCEBC theory of climate change.

Bob Ludwick

‘A former official said one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to "protect" the president.’

<http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005>

Roland Dobbins

al-Awlaki

Jerry,

I must be slow. I’m not exactly clear about what the difference what happened to al-Awlaki and if a Union sharpshooter had shot a Confederate soldier dead during the Civil War. They or I might say we (my father claimed one our ancestors died of wounds he received at Chickamauga), were engaged in armed insurrection against the U.S. government. If what President Lincoln did was legal, why isn’t what President Obama did also legal?

Joel Upchurch

I take it that you would have had no objection to the Union sending a hit man to London to take out the Confederate ambassador, then? Or had we had drones, firing one at Tom Hayden when he and Fonda visited Hanoi? Do understand, had I been able to get out of our blackbirds from South Viet Nam to Hanoi at the time, I would have been pleased to order a strike with the 105 (accurate to cep 10 feet at 10,000 yards slant range) on Hayden and Fonda. But who should have had the authority to order the strike? That’s the question worth debating.

Subj: Current FEMA director not quite as clueless as you seem to think

Craig Fugate came up from local disaster-handling. He knows full well

that the initial response to a disaster can only be local. He’s trying

to manage down the widely prevalent unrealistic expectations that FEMA

can and should respond instantly and effectively.

Of course, he cannot unilaterally reverse the entire institutional

inclination of his agency.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/CraigF

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Perhaps so, but he has an impossible job.

taxes & philanthropy

Perhaps some readers will consider reading the information at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-04/rockefeller-ellison-weill-turner-allen-join-buffett-s-charity-pledge.html

chris klow

A soft sell.

How stakeholders see each other

As usual, it funny because it has at least a ring of truth to it…

http://mthruf.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/workplace-subjectivity-chart1.jpg

Regards,

Bill Wilkinson