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Monday  Mail May 10, 2010

The following is an excerpt from Secretary Gates Speech at the Eisenhower Library on 8 May 2010.

“In considering these questions, we have to be mindful of the iron law of bureaucracies – that the definition of essential work expands proportionally with the seniority of the person in charge and the quantity of time and staff available – with 50-page power point briefings being one result.”

Looks like someone is paying attention to an aspect of the Defense Department that needs it.

==

This is a post to an emergency management forum. Iron Law in action.

 Oil threat in the Gulf and regulation

IAEM Discussion Group:

What seems to be finally emerging is an understanding that the federal regulatory body that is responsible for the regulation of oil wells once recommended, as a fail save device, a unit that is used on oil rigs in the European Union. There it is used as a fail safe to cut off the flow based upon a separate signal and assuming the destruction of the platform.

However, the same companies forced to use the device in Europe and other areas were left to decide if they would install it and chose not to (three years after the recommendation was proposed) as a result of policies to let the industry regulate itself. The leadership at BP told the government that the platform would never fail. Also the now public history of safety on these platfroms with a fire/explosion happening once a week on the 4000 rigs in the gulf and a death every month on the average would result in any sensible risk analysis showing the chance of something worse to be much higher. Think would the risk factor would be if these incident rates for accidents and deaths were allowed for nuclear power plants.

There were articles on this in the New York Times over the past week and I am sure there are some other sources as well. Some of those same stories pointed out a number of investigation and exposures of the excessive rewards members of that regulatory body were accepting from industry

As long as we keep thinking critical industries like energy and food should be left to self regulation, we will continue to face more of these "unexpected" disasters. To many of the regulatory decisions in past years seem to be made on political power decisions instead of being based on professional studies by those that understand the technologies involved. Safety of workers in the coal industry is another example we also recently had.

Distinguished Professor Emeritus

I first presented my plan to have an oil spill recovery service financed by an oil production tax to Governor Reagan in about 1967. The time to develop detergents and other procedures is before a crisis.

===========

Defenders of Affirmative Action Take Aim at California Ban to Derail Similar Measures in Other States http://chronicle.com/article/Defenders-of-Affirmative/64210/  February 15, 2010

By Peter Schmidt

An activist group plans on Tuesday to file a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of California's Proposition 209 ban on affirmative-action preferences in an attempt to hinder campaigns for similar measures in other states.

The lawsuit will be filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of black, Hispanic, and Native American students seeking admission to the University of California, according to a statement issued on Monday by the group mounting the litigation, the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary.

The lawsuit will argue that the California measure, adopted by that state's voters in 1996, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution by placing a distinct set of legal hurdles in front of minority groups seeking to increase their representation on the university system's campuses.<snip>

Note that there is no mention of performance or qualification. It's racial quota pure and simple.

==============

Proofreading is a dying art

Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter This one I caught in the SGV Tribune the other day and called the Editorial Room and asked who wrote this. It took two or three readings before the editor realized that what he was reading was impossible!!! They put in a correction the next day.

============

Letter From England

The election is over and it's a hung parliament--nobody has a majority. For most of the world, that's normal, but UK politicians are unhappy having to negotiate compromises to get legislation passed. Brown is not willing to leave, betting that any attempt to force him out will antagonise the electorate. Lib-Dems and Conservatives are negotiating a coalition. <http://tinyurl.com/33oag9f> <http://tinyurl.com/2e3nk5d> <http://tinyurl.com/35ofpdr> <http://tinyurl.com/286r6vx> <http://tinyurl.com/2u8nnz8> <http://tinyurl.com/2wvqacv> <http://tinyurl.com/32vp8sf> <http://tinyurl.com/37m7bxu>. (My preference is for decentralised rule and liberty, but I don't vote.)

 The Queen watches bemused <http://tinyurl.com/39t2qbx>

 Cromwell's comment on the situation: "You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

 Many UK voters were disenfranchised by lack of ballot papers and insufficient capacity at polling stations <http://tinyurl.com/2wnhmgx> <http://tinyurl.com/2ubsuqh>

 

Educational issues: <http://tinyurl.com/2wy53jz>

 Euro crisis goes global <http://tinyurl.com/34k5z7n>.

 I went to the Sunderland Eye Infirmary to have an eye condition checked out. It's called cellophane maculopathy, and it's a side-effect of my posterior vitreous detachment. Nothing to do but come back if it gets worse. It can be treated by surgery, but that will almost always result in a cataract.

 I've been reading Sean Carroll, From Eternity to Here, discussing cosmology. There are a couple of interesting points--the universe we see is clearly not everything that exists, and it is not an accidental thermodynamic fluctuation--rather this is how universes seem to evolve in this metauniverse.

==

 Cory Doctorow gets phished. See <http://craphound.com/> http://www.locusmag.com/
Perspectives/2010/05/cory-doctorow-
persistence-pays-parasites/

Medvedev denounces Stalin <http://tinyurl.com/3acsvhb>

 --

Harry Erwin, PhD

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." (Catherine Aird)

 

============

the welfare state

Buying off the Legions?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2010/05/07/AR2010050703
054.html?hpid=topnews

Machiavelli had a very great deal to say about what happens to Republics who keep large standing armies of paid soldiers. So did the Framers at the Convention of 1787, and the Philadelphia Constitution -- (the US Constitution as adopted for those not familiar with colonial and Articles history of the US) had a good bit to say about the subject. The experience of the English Civil War and the Commonwealth was much on their minds, when Cromwell's Army made its pay a first mandate in the new Constitution. Of course none of that can ever happen here.

I'll have more to say on this elsewhere, but imagine a scenario: there is rioting. A governor calls out the National Guard to suppress the rioters. The rioters are part of the then President's base. The President proclaims the Guard Federalized and forbids them to suppress the riots. The Guard commander asserts his loyalty to his state and his people and to public order.

What will the Legions do?

============

Scientists defend climate change research in open letter | TG Daily

http://www.tgdaily.com/sustainability-features/49672-scientists-defend-climate-change-research-in-open-letter?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A tgdaily_all_sections%28TG Daily - All News%29&utm_content=Google Reader   

There is a post in TG Daily that describes a letter published in Science magazine, from more than 250 Scientists. Science magazine uses a pay wall. TG Daily quotes from the letter:

Much of the controversy stems from a lack of scientific understanding on the part of the general public, they say."

"There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything," says the letter.

I am a climate skeptic, but I have an open mind. As part of the general public, maybe my understanding of science would be improved if the scientists actually published their science, including raw data, methods, software source code, etc. Maybe when scientists or politicians that clearly say things that aren't true, maybe they should be critical.

As far as scientific uncertainty, scientists should publicly disagree with anyone that claims that AGW is established science. And allow for other scientists to disagree, without threatening them with jail, or prevent publication of their work.

I other words, maybe the expert scientists should act like scientists.

Wouldn't that be loverly...

===========

UCLA Professor Calls for Mexican Revolt at La Raza Rally in UCLA

Jerry,

I often go to several campuses throughout the Southern California area. I have seen La Raza and other ethnocentric groups on state university campuses from Bakersfield to Orange County--and out in Riverside. La Raza means "the race" and they aren't talking about NASCAR. "For those inside the race everything, for those outside the race nothing." At CSU Fullerton, the local La Raza group has its own lounge near the Math faculty offices. On CSU Long Beach, La Raza signs are often displayed on campus indicating rallies.

Now, at UCLA, we have a sitting professor--whose salary is paid by taxpayer money, if I am not mistaken--calling for revolution in the United States and saying that California is stolen land from Mexico. He then goes on to call white people racist and saying that he is part of a northern front in a Latin American revolution. What is going on in this country?

Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGqPo5ofk0s 

-- BDAB,

Josh

"Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened." —Winston Churchill

“The opinion of ten thousand men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.” —Marcus Aurelius

============

Government debt is not the whole problem

The following stats are from the Washington Post today:

Public Debt as a % of GDP:

US 94%
Germany 84%
Spain 70%

=== So why is Spain on the “soon to default list”?

Because Spain has 20% unemployment, generous social welfare benefits and therefore has to run higher annual deficits than those other countries (11% vs. 2.3 % in Germany).

So basically, Spain is adding to their total debt at a much higher rate and their cost of borrowing is climbing fast (for example, last month 10 yr Spanish bonds were yielding 3.8%, this month 4.2% and climbing).

When the dole checks can't be cashed because the government has no money, what happens?

Socialism eventually runs out of money. Spreading the wealth around doesn't work if there is no wealth.

==

My Dad, age 87, bales hay for pay. Now he will have to keep track of where he buys gas and diesel, repair parts and twine and get taxpayer id numbers and file the 1099s. His business consists of--him. This is another example of why 2000 page bills are bad.

----------

This is why my Dad, may he rest in his grave, said always pay cash for everything, never have a bank account, do not register for the draft, do not get a credit card, rent any vehicle which requires a license or registration.

Of course that was in the day when there were still small communities, you could borrow your neighbors equipment on trust, and you could get by without a credit card. <http://sqlzoo.net/

Y

============

Spam with payload

Jerry

As I see the huge increase of Spam with toxic attachments purporting to be from iTunes or Amazon, I think that it is well past time for International Law to institute a Death Penalty or something worse for these miscreants.

The cost to International Commerce is, undoubtedly, in the tens to hundreds of Billion Dollars annually when all of the productivity lost in dealing with the Spam and Trojans is added up. When the economic value of a human life is considered quite a few of these pieces of excrement would have to be offed to balance the books.

Bob Holmes

Sent from my iPad

Drastic. I think public flogging would do the job. It needs to be public and painful.

============

Ogg and H.264

Dr. Pournelle,

A letter from Terry Cole you post, quoted as follows:

" Third, Steve Jobs is on record as saying that a new patent attack is to be mounted on those video and audio codecs which have no patent encumbrance, such as Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora. For a short time these were listed as part of the HTML5 standard, but they were ejected for the threat of "submarine" patents, although Ogg is designed to avoid them, inefficiency, and no hardware acceleration. The inefficiency and hardware acceleration can be improved, but a nebulous FUD patent threat can't. "

Makes the assertion that Ogg is an inefficient multimedia container, for that's what Ogg is just like AVI. The following, long, rebuttal of such another recent rant of the same type but it of interest for your more technically inclined readers. It should be noted there are also some comments on video patents in general in the essay as well.

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/lj-pseudocut/o-response-1.html 

Sincerely, Ted

================d

 

 

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Tuesday,  May 11, 2010

I got way behind today.

For a PDF copy of A Step Farther Out:

 

f

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CURRENT VIEW    Tuesday

 

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Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Catching up.

==========

Windbags...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405
2748703880304575236453005869966.html 

"The ferocious opposition from Massachusetts liberals to the Cape Wind project has provided a useful education in green energy politics. And now that the Nantucket Sound wind farm has won federal approval, this decade-long saga may prove edifying in green energy economics too: Namely, the price of electricity from wind is more than twice what consumers now pay."

"Two weeks ago, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved Cape Wind, placing it in the vanguard of "a clean energy revolution." A slew of environmental and political outfits have since filed multiple lawsuits for violations of the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, certain tribal-protection laws, the Clean Water Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Rivers and Harbors Act."

Charles Brumbelow

There are exceptions having to do with power transmission, but for the most part power from wind costs between two and ten times as much per kilowatt as fossil fuel power, and given the energy required to make the wind mills and collection and storage can result is as much or more CO2 over the lifetime of the field (most of it being upfront but some being in maintenance).

Wind is simply not economic for large cities; it may be a good thing in more isolated areas. And of course it is generally sporadic although again in some places it's fairly steady.

=============

Subject: Bill Gates chucks cash at climate cooling cloud creator

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/11/silver_lining/ 

Bill Gates chucks cash at climate cooling cloud creator

Tracy Walters, CISSP

I will have to look into it. Gates is not stupid, and not easily overcome by ideological arguments.

=========

Subject: 'Phantom Ray' robot stealth jet rolls out

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/11/phantom_ray_rollout/ 

Tracy Walters, CISSP

=============

The NorK Phoenix:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/12/
north-korea-claims-scientists-succeeded-
elusive-nuclear-fusion-reaction/?test=latestnews 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea claimed Wednesday that its scientists succeeded in creating a nuclear fusion reaction, but experts doubted the isolated communist country actually had made the breakthrough in the elusive clean-energy 

North Korea's main newspaper, however, reported that its own scientists achieved the feat on the occasion of the "Day of the Sun" — a North Korean holiday marking the birthday of the country's late dynastic founder, Kim Il Sung, in April.<snip>

Experts, however, doubted the North's claim.

"Nuclear fusion reaction is not something that can be done so simple. It's very difficult," said Hyeon Park, a physics professor at Postech, a top science and technology university in South Korea.<snip>

I would be very dubious. As said, it's not easy. Los Alamos could do it by brute force, but just barely.

==============

Brown has resigned and Cameron has formed a coalition Government. This involves the Tories and the Liberals, my preferred outcome, as it will hopefully lead to decentralisation and a renewed commitment to liberty.

 BBC <http://tinyurl.com/2w4bnv9> <http://tinyurl.com/3x6pbgj> Guardian <http://tinyurl.com/33qxult> <http://tinyurl.com/28eokue> Independent <http://tinyurl.com/233cggs> Times <http://tinyurl.com/37xe5jx> <http://tinyurl.com/2wfrww4> <http://tinyurl.com/397bkn7> Telegraph<http://tinyurl.com/238f2xz>  <http://tinyurl.com/2gyrga8> <http://tinyurl.com/29utspl> Register <http://tinyurl.com/2wcv6l8> <http://tinyurl.com/2bqxbq4> Coalition proposals <http://tinyurl.com/d3no9k> <http://tinyurl.com/yahlae3>

 Also of interest: <http://tinyurl.com/37psffj>

 --

Harry Erwin, PhD

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." (Benjamin Franklin, 1755)

We await further developments. Will England go Proportionate Representation rather than single member districts now? That's usually a pretty drastic change.

============

Excellent column by Jay Cost. Snips:

“And yet for all this, the people do indeed rule. While their power is limited, it is nevertheless unconditional where it exists. Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi need the assent of the people of the United States to govern this country. But the people don't need any such thing. In the limited sphere where they rule, they are supreme.”

“The people have a limited role in this government - but where the people do possess power, they are like a force of nature. They cannot be stopped.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
horseraceblog/2010/05/thunder_on_the_mountain.html 

C

===========

The Crystals at the Center of the Earth.

<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/05/crystals-earth-core/>

Roland

The more we think we know...

=============

Market

The difference between Greece and California is that the accounting is open and it has crept up incrementally, and California is not required to actually pay the pensions quite yet.

Something similar may be said about New Jersey and Portugal. Then there are 15-20 states that are grossly underfunded. We're running out of EU countries to compare.

I have a war story from yesterday afternoon. My hedge cost about 3%, just in the time it took to type it. It moved another 10% in the next 30 seconds. The markets are pretty punchy this (Friday, May 7) morning.

Unsettled markets are better than rioting in the streets, but looking five years out I am concerned about just that possibility.

Of course getting a riot out of retired politicians drawing three pensions may be a little different than getting a riot out of 50 year old Greeks. (I live in Jersey, and use the word "politician" advisedly [ex-mayor/ex-state senator/Corzine's cabinet member, raided last year {same guy, Bayonne}]).

David Schierholz

After a short exchange of mail, he adds

==

It may not be precisely on topic, as I do not know for sure this particular guy is drawing pensions on three different jobs. It is my understanding that he would have been eligible for a state pension, based on his executive branch pay after three years. I am not sure he made it that far before his resignation was forced.

However, he was a state senator, simultaneously was mayor of our town, and he did move to the executive branch and was described in a newspaper article as in the cabinet. He was named in the newspaper (I believe both of the North Jersey papers, although I don't recall which one I read) as associated with the big scandal last year, with prongs in Jersey and Brooklyn. I was told by a neighbor that his home here in Bayonne was raided, which is consistent with what I read in the paper.

And I observed him with a pained look on his face in the second mile of a town parade the year before, said pain rumored to be from bunions, making him a bad prospect for a rioter.

One has to maintain a sense of humor living in Jersey, but I am also keeping most of my assets outside of the state. The voters have placed the US Attorney in the governor's mansion for a reason. Our town of 60,000 is staggering under half a billion in debt, a hundred million of which came on in the last administration and was used to fund the deficit. The arbitration method of resolving disputes guarantees a ratchet up effect, and one can't get a public job without knowing someone. I don't see how the state gets out of it.

Yes- publish if you would care to. Publish this elaboration if you would care to. I inserted the date in my original below from Friday.

This is a lot better than being born in Zimbabwe.

David Schierholz

==========

Become an Ex-pat?,

Jerry,

An interesting read that at least gives one tidbits to chew on.

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/
default/files/American_Expatriation_Guide.pdf 

Sue

============

Voyager 2 just reached the edge of the solar system and started speaking in tounges. Wonder what's out there.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/
37006045/ns/technology_and_science-space/ 

RH

V'ger...

===========

Buying off the legions

Hi Jerry, I think I have mentioned Tom Kratman's book,"State of Disobedience" before. This is about a similar state of affairs when the Lone Star State decides it has had enough. You might like to have a look, it is a Bean book and might be on Kindle. I found the ending weak and it could have possibly been better written-but what do I know I am only a chemist. I also suggest you have a look at http://sciencemadness.org / go to the Library and download a pdf of Ignition! by John. d. Clark, you will find it fun, your son in the Rocket trade (Richard?) might like it as well.

Best wishes and "Woof" to Sable Pournelle, I hope she is able to bound up hills soon.

Yours Andrew Deacon

Sable's big problem is that she is bored. When Larry came over today she made it very clear that it was unfair for us to go up the hill without her. She loves hiking with Larry. Keeping her from injuring her rebuilt knee until it heals is a real chore.

=============

Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization series pubbed by Baen

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

I'm not a regular reader of your website (and I'm certain that I'm the poorer for it, but there's only so much time to spend online) , so I only recently became aware of your March 19, 2010 mention of Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization series which Baen is doing in seven volumes (with two more to go).

Here's the relevant portion:

"Anderson's works have been collected into relevant volumes, some with introductory matter by his widow Karen, and are being published by Baen Books. The entire Terran saga from the early League through the Empire and beyond. It begins with The Van Rijn Method <http://www.amazon.com/Van-Rijn-Method-Technic-Civilization/dp/1439133263/jerrypournellcha>  , continues with David Falkayn Star Trader <http://www.amazon.com/David-Falkayn-Trader-Technic-Civilization/dp/1439133441/jerrypournellcha>   , and then the early Empire stories, after which comes the entire Flandry Saga beginning with Young Flandry <http://www.amazon.com/Young-Flandry-Technic-Civilization-Saga/dp/1439133271/jerrypournellcha>  (which Poul really wanted to give the title Mr. Midshipman Flandry; he wasn't shy about admitting his indebtedness to C. S. Forester) and continuing in a number of volumes. All those stories hold up pretty well. They're good space opera done by a master story teller."

As for the last sentence, they sure are, and he sure was. And thank you for the kind words. However, none of the books have introductory matter by Karen Anderson. I've been compiling the volumes, and writing the introductions. It would have been fine with me if Karen Anderson had wanted to contribute material, and she did correct a mistake in the most recent intro I did, but so far, the intros are all my fault. Some of the eBook versions have had/will have essays by Sandra Miesel, but not the dead tree versions so far. My introductions tend to be gushy fanboy pieces, while Sandra, who has forgotten more about the Tech. Civ. than I'll ever know, writes in a more serious vein -- academic, you might say, but without being either stuffy or clogged with Eng. Lit. jargon.

Was the novel Ensign Flandry (earliest of the Flandry stories by internal chronology) the book with Poul Anderson wanted to give the title "Mr. Midshipman Flandry"? If I had known that sooner, I might have used that title on the Baen omnibus of the first three Flandry novels (again, by internal chronology) instead of calling it Young Flandry. Or maybe not, since David Weber, who also isn't shy about admitting his indebtedness to C. D. Forester, had already written a novella with the title "Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington," also for Baen. But thanks for the info, which I'll mention in the introduction to the next book, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra.

Cheers,

Hank Davis

Baen Books

I am not sure where the  story of Flandry with his first command was first published but my impression is that it was a novellete or novella and probably in a magazine; I do know that I liked it and when I told Poul that I liked it he and Karen grinned and one of them said that the intended title was "Mr. Midshipman Flandry", as an homage to Forrester. Apparently an editor thought that "space opera" was bad and that title would make it look like space opera, and...  Or some such. It was a casual conversation a long time ago.

Apologies for the misinformation. I had the impression that Karen would be doing prefaces.

And they're still great yarns.

============

A New Business Model

Dear Jerry:

This is a discussion item I posed on LinkedIn today:

 

A NEW BUSINESS MODEL: We are amking the price of the e-book edition the same as that of the least expensive print edition.

Most of our publishing since 2004 has been in e-books. Originally we followed the conventional wisdom that e-books should cost less because they are virtual rather than real-world products. We had most titles at about $1.95. We distribute through Ingram, so we only receive, net, 45% of that price. We found that some online retailers were marking up our titles to $9.95 and $9.95 and keeping the difference. We also found that we have no control over what other people charge. Most of this material, more than sixty titles in all, are recycled trade magazine articles of limited interest to the general public. It sells slowly. We raised the price to $4.99. That gives us a net of of $2.25 per copy. The rest goes to paying for distribution. These items are available in just three formats. Adobe, Microsoft Reader and Sony Reader. They sell best in the Sony format. We have one fiction piece "Buying Retail" for 49 cents and that sells ten times as many copies than the rest, but it's an entertainment product rather than an information one. Given our new orientation towards fiction and other narrative forms, it's a sampler. A leader item to attract readers for "The Shenandoah Spy" and other works of fiction.

It recently came to me, in the wake of the dust-up with Amazon and the big publishers over pricing that anyone who can spend several hundred dollars for the coolness and convenience of an electronic book reader can afford to pay full price for a book, regardless of format. Mr. Bezos may consider all books as just another online commodity to be sold at high velocity at the lowest possible price to gain market share, but my view is that every book is unique and has value regardless of the way it was produced. The current system locks me into surrendering more than half the fair market price of my book to others to get it to the customers. Each format has front end costs which must be recovered. And I don't care which format the customer prefers. I want my percentage. Making a e-book version available is a accommodation to a customer, but it's a convenience they should pay a fair price for. My own preference is to sell the print edition and have done with it. So, if you want to read the book electronically, you pay the same price.

Now some retailers routinely cut the price, but that doesn't matter to me since that discount comes from their end of the deal and not mine. I have to maintain per-copy margins to survive as a business. I own this book and have put it out at a fair price. Certainly, it's not the only one on the shelf, but if you want to read it then you have to buy it from me, unless you buy a used copy or deal with pirates. And if you do that, then you were never really a potential customer anyway, were you?

I will cut the price of the e-book edition in the future to match the least priced paperback in the U.S. market. I think if other publishers follow my lead this will resolve a lot of the current problems of print versus electronic pricing. .

Francis Hamit Brass Cannon Books

I ain't bad at publicity but I sure don't want to run a publishing house.  Thanks!

==============

Spammers ordered to pay tiny ISP whopping $2.6m

 $650,000 per employee courtesy of CAN-SPAM

 By Dan Goodin in San Francisco <http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2010/05/06/spam_judgment/>

 Posted in Spam <http://www.theregister.co.uk/security/spam/> , 6th May 2010 22:00 GMT

 A small internet service provider has been awarded nearly $2.6m in a lawsuit it filed against a company that sent just under 25,000 spam messages over an 18-month period.

 Although it's questionable whether Asis Internet Services will ever see a penny of that windfall, the judgment is testament to the awesome power of CAN-SPAM, short for the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, which was passed by Congress in 2003. It allows judgments of as much as $100 for every unsolicited email, and damages can be tripled for a variety of reasons.

 The judgment was awarded by Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte of the US District Court in Northern California. It comes in a case filed against the principals of a business called Find a Quote. A four-employee ISP in Garberville, California, Asis said it receives about 200,000 junk messages per day and spends about $3,000 per month to process them. <snip>

 

==============

Screwing of Main Street by Wall Street...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/quinn/quinn29.1.html 

"Michael Lewis wrote the classic Wall Street book about the greed of the 1980's Liar’s Poker <>   , published in 1989. He detailed the absurdity and greed of Wall Street from his firsthand experiences working at Salomon Brothers fresh out of college. He captured the destructive culture of Wall Street in a very funny 290-page classic. He immortalized the term Big Swinging Dick regarding Salomon ("If he could make millions of dollars come out of those phones, he became that most revered of all species: a Big Swinging Dick.")."

"He has now book-ended two decades of greed with his latest masterpiece The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine <>   . He was able to link the two books by interviewing John Gutfreund, his former boss at Salomon Brothers, at the end of his new book. Lewis is able to explain the most recent financial crisis caused by Wall Street through the eyes of a few oddball skeptics. It is a truly enlightening book and reveals the true nature of the Wall Street mega-banks."

"STEVE EISMAN – Manager of FrontPoint Financial Services hedge fund, which was owned by Morgan Stanley. During the financial crisis he wished he could have shorted Morgan Stanley. "Even on Wall Street people think he's rude and obnoxious and aggressive," says Eisman's wife. "He has no interest in manners. He's not tactically rude. He's sincerely rude. He knows everyone thinks of him as a character but he doesn't think of himself that way. Steven lives inside his head." "The upper classes in this country raped this country. You fucked people. You built a castle to rip people off. Not once in all these years have I come across a person inside a big Wall Street firm who was having a crisis of conscience. Nobody ever said ‘This is wrong’." Eisman understood Wall Street thoroughly: "What I learned from that experience was that Wall Street didn’t give a shit what it sold."

"HOWIE HUBLER – Single-handedly lost $9 billion for Morgan Stanley with one trade. He was the ultimate Big Swinging Dick as the head of mortgage bond trading who made $25 million the year he lost the $9 billion. CEO John Mack had no clue what his bond traders were doing. Hubler went on vacation and never came back."

Charles Brumbelow

=================f

 

 

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Thursday, May 13, 2010

Too Simple?

Jerry,

In this video, two experts show the ease of cleaning an oil spill using hay.

http://video.godlikeproductions.com
/video/CWRoberts_Presentation_2wmv 

Unfortunately, I have to conclude that neither one has a degree from an Ivy League school, nor do they have political connections. They have Southern drawls and the clothes of hard workers. Hence, their very green and apparently effective method will be ignored.

What a boon for farmers if BP would use hay to mop up the oil spill.

Sue

I presume that would work. I have no expertise in the matter, but logic would suggest that the time to prove out such techniques is when there is no crisis. As I proposed in 1967 as a condition of off shore drilling, forming a cleanup service like a fire department that would conduct research in cleanup methods including absorbents and detergents, all financed by a separation tax, would make a lot of sense.  Accidents will happen; best to prepare for them in advance.

=============

Subject: Fujitsu demos next-gen color e-paper

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/
05/11/fujitsu_color_epaper/ 

Tracy Walters, CISSP

Now that is a potential game changer!

===========

SUBJ: 16 words to end Spam

Dear Jerry,

you wrote on Monday that punishment for spammers should be: "Drastic. I think public flogging would do the job. It needs to be public and painful."

I reiterate, why bring government into it when it is not at all needful?

The 16 words: "I solemnly swear I will NEVER vote to convict ANYONE of ANY crime against a spammer."

When 1/12 of eligible jurors have taken this pledge, Nature can proceed to correct the spam problem. Indeed, I suspect much of the correction will be both "public and painful."

No laws need be changed. Not one cent of public money need be spent. No new bureaucracies need be created. The correction, once implemented will be self-sustaining.

You may opine (again) that this approach is excessive. However, nothing else really effective has been seriously proposed and nothing else seriously proposed promises to be really effective.

"Think of it as evolution in action." :)

Cordially, John

Reminding me of Beam Piper's "Planet for Texans" where by law there is no crime in horsewhipping or shooting politicians... It does not actually make for good government, of course.

============

: Atlantis

Jerry,

Atlantis? Well, probably not, but still...

http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20100510-27097.html 

German scientists announced on Monday they believe they have discovered sunken islands in the Caribbean Ocean following a deep sea exhibition in April. <snip> As a result of their findings, the scientists believe that the submarine mountains, whose summits now top out at between 800 and 1,000 metres below the surface, were volcanic islands in the Caribbean Sea some 40 to 50 million years ago.

The Greifswald group hypothesizes that they were part of a reef that grew on a basalt platform and sank during a seismic event in the ocean’s crust.

Jim

Old is the Earth, and none may count her days. One wonders what the effect of those volcanoes was. Did they cause warming? Cooling? Earth abides.

============

From last Monday

solar 

Jerry,

www.solarcycle24.com 

After a spate of about six sunspot groups over 9 days (only one of which produced any significant flare activity, and that restricted to mostly C-level or very low M-level, the sun is again blank of sunspots as of yesterday afternoon.

I note that there is still substantial mountain snows plus snow over the weekend in Minnesota. Last year the last mountain snow I noted was on June 1. We'll see about this year.

Jim

Blank on Thursday. Of course we don't really know how sunspots and Earth temperatures are related. We do not that Earth was colder during the Maunder Minimum, and mechanisms are postulated, but we don't actually know.

===========

The Iron Law 

The UK's FEMA: <http://tinyurl.com/39s4ao2>  <http://tinyurl.com/375grnv

-- Harry Erwin, PhD
"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." (Catherine Aird)

===========

: Become your own virtual conductor!

Ok, this is just way cool.

http://www.sounds-of-hamburg.de/?lang=en 

Careful, you might lose some of your day there.

- Paul

Interesting  

===========

Consumer Watchdog targets Google

Jerry

An out-of-work journalist has joined an organization called Consumer Watchdog, and he's going after Google:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2010/05/08/AR20100508
00108.html?referrer=emailarticle  

So, what has Google done? "[T]he company has responded to antitrust finger-pointing by beefing up its staff in Washington. It also hired a lawyer focused on competition."

Yup. That's always good for business. And Northrup-Grumman is moving its corporate HQ from LA to the DC area in 20011. But that's OK. Due to the need to assuage all Congressmen by locating business in their districts, there's hardly any aerospace industry left in LA. No more aerospace center of excellence. Of course, what's good for Congressman Bullmoose, is good for the USA.

Yup. Pretty soon all business will be focused on DC. That has to be good for our future, right? It's Government that made our nation great. Just ask the man who was raised in Indonesia hearing the mullahs call the faithful to morning prayer.

Ed

The more I contemplate the current world the more convinced I am that companies and banks that are too big to fail need to be broken up into companies that are not too big to fail. It is unthinkable that Google could collapse and take much of the ecnomy with it; but Black Swans happen with increasing frequency. Marx's analysis of increased concentration as an inevitable consequence of competition is confirmed by many observations. The easiest way for a company to expand is to acquire the competition. Up to a point that promotes efficiency. There comes a time when it's not. Companies stumble and  fail: Schumpeter's creative destruction. But when the company is too big to fail the errors are not corrected by collapse and destruction and absorption by the competition. They are bailed out by the taxpayers who end up owning the means of production...

Economics is a complex and not very accurate science. Marx was a social philosopher, but some of his statements are verifiable. The answer is not communism. We have run that experiment. David McCord Wright thought the answer was anti-trust, and as I get older, I am more and more convinced of that.

Too Big To Fail ought not exist. That's a principle. Implementation of that is complex and difficult, but it can be done. Teddy Roosevelt managed it.

===============

Using hay to clean up oil spills 

Jerry,

The video segment suggesting a way to clean up oil spills was to use hay was interesting, but I would suggest using straw would be a lot better for the environment and economy. Production of hay is expensive and much needed as feed for stock. We get about three cuttings a year from the land we have in hay here in Montana (probably one less this year due to the cold weather hanging on). During the summer, hay can goes for an average of $50 a ton ($90 for premium Alfalfa), and in the winter, especially if it is a long one, the price can easily go to X4 or X5.

Straw is essentially a byproduct of wheat production, and we always have quite a stack of it rotting at the end of winter. We use it for various things, stock bedding, covering early seed plants, etc….but there is always too much. If they could use that, the only real cost would be transporting it to the oil spill.

Tracy

Tracy Walters, CISSP

I don't claim to have the expertise to decide: my point was that this sort of thing ought to have been tried along with many other such remedies well before the disaster. Research when there's no crisis is a lot cheaper and can be done more thoroughly, and a separation tax on off shore oil would pay for it.

==

Subj: Oil spill cleanup: a hairy approach

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/pets/
2010/05/06/2010-05-06_human_hair_and_
pet_fur_is_turned_into_mats_that_help_
clean_up_gulf_oil_spill.html 

Seems to me I recall you saying that, when Sable sheds her winter coat, there is enough fur to make another dog or two.

It's getting to be about That Time again, no? Perhaps she could contribute...

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

We thought of that when we saw the item on TV. Sable's willing. Just get her out of the cone of shame!

==========

more commercial space news 

http://gizmodo.com/5537278/
get-into-a-rocket-at-half-of-virgin-
galactics-spaceplane-price 

D

============

Subj: Ancient Amiga kills Troll!

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100513121121635 

>>> Many of you responded to the call for prior art. Some of you posted the need locally too, in your LUG or ALE lists, so the word spread. One such posting resulted in someone coming forward with a *working* Amiga, believe it or not, which he had carefully restored and gotten it going again. That Amiga went to court, and it was used to demonstrate to the jury that the Amiga represented prior art.

Now, one can never say for sure what it was that turned the tide with a jury, unless they tell us, which they haven't. But it surely helped to have three examples of prior art, one of which was used in a live demo. And from reading the transcripts of the trial, I can surely say it ought to be what did it, or at least had to be a major piece. So when the owner of the Amiga heard the news, guess what he had to say?

Apparently my habits of being an eclectic collector of historic computer gadgetry** and my work in restoring a 1986 Amiga 1000 system to its multi-screen, muti-tasking glory as prior art evidence for a Red Hat Linux patent fight paid off:

My Amiga Killed a Troll!

He gets his Amiga back now, and I'll bet it will be kept working forever and ever by one very happy geeky guy. <<<

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Hoo Haw!

=============

Support for an official language

An overwhelming majority of U.S. adults support declaring English the official language of the United States, and permitting companies doing business here to require that its employees speak English on the job.

According to a new Rasmussen poll, 87% of American adults favor declaring English the official language, and 83% favor allowing companies to require English on the job.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/
public_content/politics/general_politics/
may_2010/87_say_english_should_be_
u_s_official_language 

David

We have all known this for a long time. Having one official language was an important factor in the US "melting pot" making immigrants into Americans. Immigrants used to be proud of learning English, so to the extent that they didn't even teach the language of the Old Country to their children, even though they were having problems learning English. That was a mistake but an understandable one.

"Diversity" has never been a goal of America. One can learn to be an American in a way that you cannot learn to be Italian or Swedish or German. The goal of the Civil Rights movement when I was young was "Content of their character, not the color of their skin" -- a color blind law. I have thought the law should be color blind from high school days in the legally segregated South.

We all know that a common language is an advantage. To those who don't accept that I can only quote Orwell: You must be an intellectual. A normal person would never believe a thing like that."

===========

Subj: Wall Street and Open-Source Software Licensing

Thank you so much for the piece on "Screwing of Main Street by Wall Street"!

Thanks to that, I will never again be able to read the phrase "BSD License" without cracking up!

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php 

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

===============f

 

 

 

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Friday,  May 14, 2010

Subj: The Demolition of Detroit

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142
4052748703950804575242433435338728.
html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks 

>>Mayor Dave Bing has pledged to knock down 10,000 structures in his first term as part of a nascent plan to "right-size" Detroit, or reconfigure the city to reflect its shrinking population. ... For now, his plan calls for the tracts to be converted to other uses, such as parks or farms. Even when the demolitions are complete, Detroit will still have a huge problem on its hands. The city has roughly 90,000 abandoned or vacant homes and residential lots...<<

Not quite Asimov's "Fallen Trantor", but ...

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

The classic city of Rome was largely destroyed by quarrying...

============

Attack on the Peace Boat; irony abounds

GULF OF ADEN: SS (THE OCEANIC), a former passenger ship used by the Peace Boat, a Japan-based international non-governmental and non-profit organization to promote peace, fired upon 5 May 10 at 2122 UTC while underway in position 13:06N – 048:37E, approximately 90NM southwest of Al Mukalla, Yemen. One skiff opened fire on the vessel with automatic weapons and RPGs. The vessel increased speed and conducted evasive maneuvers and was able to successfully avoid the attack. No injuries to the crew were reported (IMB Int'l Maritime Bureau , Mercury chat, American Shipper Online).

===============f

 

 

 

 

 

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Saturday, May 15, 2010

Still recovering from flu-like whatever it is. I'll catch up on mail tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

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Sunday,  May 16, 2010   

Report & thoughts from dire straights

Well, after over a whole month of chemotherapy for my stomach cancer without any negative side effects, indeed getting stronger and stronger thanks to 45 minutes of Hatha Yoga and 20 minutes of hand weights daily, I got whacked by an intestinal blockage which had me unable to eat or drink without puking and has landed me in the Sloan Kettering hospital for the past week. The first attempt to at least deal with this intermediary condition failed and they’ll be trying to do something else next week.

Sloan Kettering has an apparently well-earned reputation as the best cancer hospital in the US, just as the US has the well-earned reputation as having the worst health care system in the developed world. It’s an almost luxurious place, or would be if it weren’t a hospital. But if I weren’t on Medicare, I would be entirely fucked, I couldn’t possibly afford it, and Obamacare would be no help.

Until I ended up here, I was doing my own witchdoctory in addition to the chemotherapy--curcumin, certain vitamins, etc. Now I can’t do it and am entirely in the hands of the hospital and the medical establishment, and there is a great feeling of powerlessness and frustration.

This is compounded by the rigid and basically inhumane rules, prolocols, and schedules of even this, the best of hospitals. Unimportant vital signs measurements at 4 am. Various people barging in and out with paper to sign, this and that, without a by your leave. No recognition that even a healthy person needs their eight hours of sleep. They don’t call someone in my position a "patient" for nothing! Patient is what you are forced to be. The doctors, the nurses, and maybe half of the orderlies, are sympatheric human beings, but the system itself is not only programmed to be heartless but even indifferent to some counterproductive health consequences of its unfeeling bureaucratic bullshit. The interuptions of sleep for example, having to wait 2 hours for some simple eye drops to be authorized by a doctor who never even saw me for another.

I don’t know whether I will survive this hospital stay, or for how long afterward if I do--weeks, months, years--but this experience is certainly memento mori that will not allow me to ever forget that I am mortal, and so are you, and so is everyone.

And whatever you do or do not believe, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, whatever, or even agnostic like me this is surely the genesis of all religion.

Norman Spinrad

Printed with permission.

===============

Oil production, nuclear power, and haze-grey ships

"One would think that more domestic oil production would be attractive to all political parties. Real wealth is created. The money stays in the United States. Jobs are created. Even a very modest separation tax would generate a lot of revenue."

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

Agreed on all points. I've suggested that--in adition to that--if it were desired to implement "shovel-ready" projects to stimulate domestic spending. how about some nice, clean, safe, zero-carbon-footprint, zero-emission nuke plants as well? I know you are on board with this, and--in addition to the obvious benefits--it would entail lots of nice, high-paying, tradesman jobs for Americans, in America.

Next on my list would be to lay down a few extra haze-grey ships and rebuild the Navy. I know that we do not see entirely eye-to-eye on defense and security policy, but surely even a low-key, non-forward-leaning foreign policy of the type you have advocated post-Cold-War would benefit from our being able to "show the flag" everywhere? And it would no doubt give second thoughts to pirates and other "enemies of all mankind". And of course, it's really, really hard to conquer and occupy anything much larger than a Caribbean island or Central American banana republic if all you have is the Navy and Marines to do it with...plus--as with the nuke plants--it's more jobs for Americans, as presumably we'd still build the ships in our own yards.

Last, but certainly not least, I've puzzled over the linked problems of cheap energy and dependence on foreign oil. One thought I had--I really don't know how well this would work, and of course the parallel I'm going to suggest comes with it s own set of warnings--would be a domestic oil production subsidy, somewhat analogous to the agricultural price supports we've had since the Depression.

Essentially, here is how I see it: cheap oil is good for consumers (and secondary-industry producers), but cheap oil is really, really bad for domestic oil production: it's no coincidence that domestic oil exploration and extraction is tied to the world price. It's more expensive (both in actual fact and for reasons of regulatory overburden) to produce oil in or near the US than in the MIddle East, so--naturally--the only times that encourage that are ones that are generally bad for the rest of the economy--when world oil prices are high.

So--why not have a sliding subsidy per barrel produced domestically (including offshore production subject to direct US regulation and oversight, such as in the Gulf of Mexico, and inshore of the territorial sea limits in the Atlantic and Pacific) which would essentially make up the difference between the current world price and some figure which would represent a mythical ideal of high price? The beauty of this would be that it would be tied to a fixed number (possibly adjusted for exogenous--that is, non-energy-related--inflation, but otherwise fixed), and it could "go negative" (i.e. turn into a tax) if the world price went even higher than the magic number.

For example (I'm just making up the numbers, if the "magic number" were $100/bbl, and the world price were $80/bbl, domestic production would receive a $20/bbl subsidy. If the world price went up to $90, the subsidy would drop to $10: if the world price went down to $40, the subsidy would increase to $60. And here's what I think is the real beauty: if the world price went up to $200/bbl, the subsidy would turn into a TAX of $100/bbl.

Again, this is just a wild idea. It's possible that the subsidy/tax should not be one-to-one, or that it should have a max and min: but as it is essentially an indirect sliding tariff on foreign oil as well. I figured you'd at least find it intriguing.

Very respectfully,
David G.D. Hecht

I don't know the magic numbers. Reagan had his views on what separation taxes ought to be charged. I thought they were too low, but I freely admit I am no expert on this. I do know that shipping a trillion dollars a year to Near East sovereign investment firms which then buy the United States in fee simple is not good policy. Most of those Middle East states are fairly unstable, and have mercenary armies to protect them (the Kuwaiti collapse to Saddam's invasion is instructive). I do not believe our energy policy makes sense, nor did it in Jimmy Carter's day.

==========

Patrick J. Buchanan: The End of La Dolce Vita http://buchanan.org/blog/the-end-of-la-dolce-vita-4031/print / (read) May 7, 2010

Are Europe and America headed to where Athens is today?

To answer the question, consider what brought Greece to where she is --running a deficit of 14 percent of gross domestic product with a debt approaching 100 percent, with Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Great Britain not that far behind. How did this happen?

Protected by the United States through a half-century of Cold War, Europe cut back on defense and ratcheted up spending for La Dolce Vita.

All of Europe adopted universal health care. All voted in a shorter workweek, a higher minimum wage, greater job security, earlier retirements and munificent pensions.

As the cradle-to-grave welfare states rose, an ever-increasing share of the labor force left the private sector for the security of the public sector.

Tax-consumers, the beneficiaries of the welfare states and the bureaucrats that ran them, grew in number, as taxpayers declined as a share of the labor force. Though Greece was far from the most productive nation in Europe, Athens led the parade.

After the baby boom ended, the pill arrival in the 1960s. Then came abortion on demand in the 1970s.<snip>

The logic of empire.

==========

Subject: Plan to tap into Social Security fund criticized

!?! Surprise! ?!

!?! Shock !?!

Who would have guessed?

http://billingsgazette.com/news/
state-and-regional/montana/article_ccaf6c12
-5f1a-11df-ba8e-001cc4c002e0.html?mode=story 

Tracy Walters, CISSP

Kick the can down the road. Someone else will be in office when we have to default.

I do note that Periclean Athens was built -- splendidly -- largely through the compulsory dues levied on members of the Athenian Defense League: the League formed to defend against Persia. Secession from the league got you the fate of Mytilene; they were invaded, the men killed, the women and children sold into slavery. For the strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must. King George III used the same logic: the colonies were expensive and should be made to pay for their defense. The result was the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere's Ride, and Concord Bridge.

Successful Empire depends on a strong will by the strong. The Athenian Democracy had that. England had not.

============

Attack on the Peace Boat; irony abounds

GULF OF ADEN: SS (THE OCEANIC), a former passenger ship used by the Peace Boat, a Japan-based international non-governmental and non-profit organization to promote peace, was fired upon 5 May 10 at 2122 UTC while underway in position 13:06N – 048:37E, approximately 90NM southwest of Al Mukalla, Yemen. One skiff opened fire on the vessel with automatic weapons and RPGs. The vessel increased speed and conducted evasive maneuvers and was able to successfully avoid the attack. No injuries to the crew were reported (IMB Int'l Maritime Bureau , Mercury chat, American Shipper Online).

R

============

We are truly a nation of idiots

Jerry,

Amazing. Some guy who does lawn work for relatives had his car trashed by the bomb squad because he had 2 gas cans in the back seat. What is next, strip searches of anyone who is seen buying batteries and wire from wal-mart? I bought a bag of fertilizer last week and it is kept in my garage near the gas can I use to feed my lawnmower, so I suppose I should expect to have my garage destroyed by the bomb squad if some random paranoid calls the cops about the suspicious situation?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/05/14/
new.york.suspicious.vehicle/index.html?hpt=T2 

Imagine that, carrying a can of gas in a car is enough to evacuate the area and call the bomb squad. We are doomed.

Sean

I note that there are few car bombs placed in the main square in Zurich.

============

We taste bad

One of Jupiter's red bands has completely disappeared. The only possible explanation is Aliens sucking up the stripe, presumably to make barbeque sauce for when they land on Earth.

RH

Let's hope we taste bad. And that one doesn't find spices on Jupiter...

==========

Google authors' settlement

Most plaintiffs in a class action suit who win or get a settlement get something of value, even if it is not worth much. Because I sent in a registration card, I got an award in a suit involving computer monitors. It was a dollars-off coupon for my next purchase of a monitor made by the same manufacturer. I bet the lawyers did not get paid in dollars-off coupons.

The Google settlement is unique in that winning authors will lose some rights.

Bob Thrun

I have come to believe that the Google settlement agreement between the Google and the Guild is the best we can come up with, and that we ought to adopt it quickly.

============

Clouds have an effect...

Dr. Roy Spencer, on his 13May blog writes:

"The difference between clouds magnifying versus mitigating warming could be the difference between global warming being little more than an academic curiosity…or a disaster for life on Earth."  <http://www.drroyspencer.com/>

It is refreshing to read an experienced scientist's simple and exciting appraisal as well as his invitation for reasoned calm discussion.

We need more people like Roy Spencer.

steven, PhD, Physicist

No one will pay to finance a model that shows that little to nothing is going to happen. I do not know how to finance contrarian research, yet we ought to be doing that. Rational debate requires good data generated by conflicting hypotheses. At least scientific rational debate does. There are other uses of Reason beyond science, but of all human activities science outh to be reasonable.

============

"The smarter you get, and the more technology you use for your business, the more impact it has on families."

<http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/04
/smallbusiness/amish_business_success/index.>

R

===========

The internet, as imagined in 1965:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/07/
nigel_calder_internet_1965/ 

Pretty spiffy, actually.

Ed

===========

Teacher Strike

Cutting the 10% worst teachers in the district would save a lot of money, and all serious studies of education show that getting lousy teachers out of the system improves the education results something wonderful, but that will not seriously be considered.

 

This is typically not what happens. What happens is the teachers who are frustrated with school management are the ones layed off. They are the ones who complain the most about the mindless rules and the blockhead bosses. That is, the ones who think the school is there to serve the community. This is why you have unions, to prevent teachers from being railroaded for political reasons. What this eventually turns into is the really good teachers get fed up and leave instead of being terminated, so the end result is the same, I guess.

Y

Precisely.

============

Regarding the Message from Amazon Kindle about ad fees -- FYI

Dear Jerry:

My own impression is that online or electronic ads of any kind are seen by most readers as merely annoying and are mostly disregarded. My current campaigns on Facebook take about 4,000 or 5,000 impressions to generate a single click through. Fortunately one does not pay much per CPM, between 15 and 20 cents. I'm accumulating fans slowly and the book is selling on Amazon.com again. They just reordered it for two of their distribution centers.

I think ads in the middle of texts will be resented and are a mistake. They might be minimally acceptable at the end of a e-book, sort of like those ads at the backs of the cheap editions of years gone by. I also think that most people will not like "enhanced" e-books with embedded links, or audio and video clips unless they are textbooks. It's useful there, but in other narratives simply distracting and potentially a negative sell.

I've been ordering a lot of DVDs lately from gohastings.com, the online store for Hastings Entertainment, at whose stores I have done so many book signings in the last two years. (Full disclosure: I also own the stock.) I'm getting these for as little as 89 cents each plus the shipping for used titles that may have been played once or twice. One came in the original shrinkwrap. This is a way for Leigh and me to catch up on all the movies we have missed, living in the mountains, but we are not much interested in all those extra features they include. It's too much like schoolwork when all we want is entertainment. Each title is shipped individually, which confused us at first, but each is coming off the shelves of an individual Hastings store to reduce surplus inventory. They buy and trade a lot of used copies. It's a great deal for consumers. My last order was ten titles for which I paid about $11.00 for the DVDs and $22.00 for the shipping and handling. That's less than $4.00 each.

Having done a lot of e-publishing since 2004, I am not rushing to do more. The front end expenses for a cover image, ISBN and formatting tend to make it a bad investment and I'd rather sell the print edition first. I look at what CostCo has been very successful doing; they limit choice and sell volume because they have millions of customers. I suspect that, by volume, they sell more books than Amazon.com and with less effort.

But selling books, in any format, is not a "one size fits all" proposition. I don't think anyone is actually asking the customers what they really want in a scientific way. If there have been any focus groups, I'm not aware of them. Most e-books are sold on the usual engineers' assumption that if something can be done, it should be done. Saying so does not make it so and the marketplace is littered with the wreckage of the many who have believed this. It is magical thinking that rarely works. The extra features are an extra production expense, but I doubt that anyone really buys a DVD because they are there. The same will be true of "enhanced" e-books.

Sincerely,

Francis Hamit

The market will soon let us know. My guess is that some will want enhancements and some will not. But I remain of the opinion that the iPad is a game changer.

==

New publication of an old play

Dear Jerry:

Following up on my last, Brass Cannon Books will shortly put out a new edition of the script for my 1988 stage play MARLOWE: An Elizabethan Tragedy. It will be done print on demand, through Ingram and will, I hope be on Amazon.com as well as through the web site. Creating an electronic version means retyping the whole thing. We are beefing this edition up a little with some information about the original production and maybe a few things about The Shakespeare Society of America, which was the original producer. When Thad Taylor, the founder, died in 2006, I assumed that the organization died with him, but his nephew, Terry Taylor has struggled to keep it alive and preserve the collection of Elizabethan documents and artwork that Thad assembled. Several thousand items. The new orientation is towards education and research rather than performance, but thye have a website and a Facebook page if anyone is interested. They need money and qualified volunteer staff. And they are no longer in the L.A. area.

As for the Marlowe play, why now, 22 years later? Well, given that there are 25 characters, 23 of them male and lots of costumes, there's not much chance it will ever be produced again for the stage. Perhaps I'll convert it to a radio play or a film script. In the meantime, it's a quick easy way to add a book to the Brass Cannon Books catalog. The second Civil War book needs additional material and that means additional research. It won't be ready this year. I also want to experiment with low-demand, high margin books and print on demand makes that easy to do. The script is based on research and Thad though I had solved the mystery of Marlowe's death in that tavern in Deptford. We'll make a more formal announcement at the end of the month. It may be of interest to academics. We aim to break even on the first hundred copies sold.

I am not going to put up a version for Kindle nor for Apple, because Apple, too, is trying to control the retail price. Their scheme leaves me the choice of making too little on the print edition or allowing them to cut the price on a version for the iPad. Sony Reader wins again.

I saw a comment in Locus about the do-it-yourself approach. The comaprison was that you might make as much from 500 copies that way as 20,000 on a royalty basis from a regular publisher but that it wouldn't help you build a career. Here's the problem, IMO, with that statement. Books from traditional publishers go out of print. About half of them are returned to be remaindered or pulped. DIY print on demand books never need to. Long term you may sell as many copies and make a lot more money over time. I admit I have a background that most writers lack when it comes to figuring this out. My original college majors were Drama and Business. I did part of an MBA course and I've done a lot of business coverage as a journalist. But, as I keep saying, none of it is "rocket science". The necessary skills can be learned.

I may put out a couple of shorter works of fiction the same way. I am sure that many will view this as a terrible mistake, but I have a pile of old files to work with and they do me no good just sitting in the files. As our colleague Linton Robinson put it, "Unpublished work does not really exist."

We're still playing with the general e-book market, but the results over the last six years are not encouraging. Apple might change all of that, but Google Editions looks more likely to be the friend of small publishers since they don't plan to control price and to make everything work on any platform. Anything that cuts my front end prep costs is very attractive. Sony Reader got me by volunteering to do all the conversions themselves, without charge. And I get a check from them every month. Those are getting bigger.

Sincerely,

Francis Hamit

Francis Hamit is an old friend. I have not read his Marlow play. I probably will read it this year; I have long been mildly intrigued by Marlowe's death. I do not believe Marlowe "was Shakespeare".

===========

Market

The difference between Greece and California is that the accounting is open and it has crept up incrementally, and California is not required to actually pay the pensions quite yet.

Something similar may be said about New Jersey and Portugal. Then there are 15-20 states that are grossly underfunded. We're running out of EU countries to compare.

I have a war story from yesterday afternoon. My hedge cost about 3%, just in the time it took to type it. It moved another 10% in the next 30 seconds. The markets are pretty punchy this morning.

Unsettled markets are better than rioting in the streets, but looking five years out I am concerned about just that possibility.

Of course getting a riot out of retired politicians drawing three pensions may be a little different than getting a riot out of 50 year old Greeks. (I live in Jersey, and use the word "politician" advisedly [ex-mayor/ex-state senator/Corzine's cabinet member, raided last year {same guy, Bayonne}]).

David Schierholz

==============

Pacemaker Problems, Global Warming, Price of Empire

Jerry;

I had a rather painful cardiac incident a few weeks ago which sent me off to my cardiologist. A stress echocardiogram caused the Dr to suspect that one of the leads from my pacemaker was out of place. A chest X-ray revealed that the pacemaker lead had somehow burrowed its way through the septum of my heart so that it is now in the left rather than right atrium. A check of older X-rays confirms that this occurred prior to 2005. My doctor who has been practicing for decades has never seen this before nor have any of his local collegues. Removing pacemaker leads is difficult and risky even with the new, annular fiber optics that allows surgeons to use a laser to cut them loose from surrounding arterial and heart tissue. Cutting through the septum is a bit of an unknown. I also don't think I should leave the lead in place. Typical lead placement includes a large "J" that allows it to flex and bend in response to heart motion so that it will not be putting stress on the artery wall. There now is no such curved section to relieve stress which might explain why I've always been able to feel the damn thing.

You had an interesting letter recently from someone questioning why you favor efforts to sequester CO2 when you are a heretic who rejects global warming theology. Your point that injecting CO2 into the atmosphere is a dangerous experiment in geoengineering that you do not wish to continue is right on. I'm still trying to get my local paper to publish an Op-Ed extolling the virtues of OTEC systems.

The recent overthrough of the ruler of Turkmenistan has given you cause to express your views about empire verses republic. While I really can't refute your argument, I can't agree with reverting to isolationism. Technology has made the world smaller. The Atlantic and the Pacific are no longer such formidiable moats. I must confess that I would take a perverse satisfaction in watching as Europe continues the transition into becoming Eurabia.

JIm Crawford

I would not call returning to a policy of "friends of liberty everywhere, but the guardians only of our own" a return to isolationism. I would not call spending the money on developing our own resources rather than on military adventures isolationism. I was for the defense of this country wherever that was required, and I still am; but I think a strong Navy and Air Force will keep the enemies off our shores while we develop our resources. Turkmenistan has little I want. Few of us can even name the nations of the Russian and Chinese Turkestans, much less their resources and exports (other than raw opium).

===============f

 

 

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