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View 561 March 9 - 15, 2009

 

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Monday, March 9, 2009

It's time for our walk. Yesterday we went to Das Rheingold, and there's a short report with pictures from the cast party on last night's View.

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

The business about whether one wants the President of the United States to "fail" continues, with Newt Gingrich having some words on the subject in Meet The Press yesterday. The problem is that we don't have a prime minister: the President is simultaneously the President of the United States, the head of the administration, and the head of his party. It sounds unseemly -- Newt called it 'irrational' -- to wish failure for the President of the United States (unless you're an enemy of the United States). It sounds too much like wishing for failure for the nation.

One can be a bit less enthusiastic about the administration, but even then one doesn't really want failure: we don't really want more unemployment, more foreclosures, more bank collapses. Sometimes it's hard to see how what is being done can possibly succeed, just as many of us thought President Carter's policies could not possibly succeed and would result in both stagflation and setbacks in the Cold War; but no one rejoiced in the humiliation of the United States when Iran seized the US embassy. (Even George Kennan said we ought to have declared war on Iran.)

And of course even some Democrats may want the president as party leader to fail: he appears to be taking both the country and the Democratic Party far over toward Socialism and Big Government. One doesn't have to cheer for Republicans to wish that the Democratic Party would move in the opposite direction.

Even Rush Limbaugh hopes that the President will succeed in rallying the nation and keeping our spirits up.

As to who shall be the leader of the Opposition, that remains to be seen; but whoever it shall be will certainly hope that the present leader of the Democratic Party fails and fails dismally, even if he doesn't put it quite that way.

==========

It's time for our walk. I put up a lot of mail last night, all of it interesting.

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

I have a request from a reader:

"To spit on your hands and lower the pike; to stand fast over the body of Leonidas the King; to be rear guard at Kunu-Ri; to stand and be still to the Birkenhead Drill; these are not rational acts. They are often merely necessary." Pournelle

Although I have enjoyed your work in the past and still enjoy your commentary, I have no idea where this quote originated. A book? An article?

If it is, indeed, quoted from one of your works, could you tell me which book or article, please. I do appreciate your time and consideration in this matter. (It's been drivin' me nuts...)

Yes, it's a bit dull, but life is like that from time to time...and I sincerely thank any and all gods for such small favors.

S.

Warren "Bones" Bonesteel Sgt USMC 1976-1983

I certainly wrote that, probably as part of an introduction to a story in one of the many anthologies I did. Possibly in one of the volumes of THERE WILL BE WAR, or one of the other anthology series. If anyone knows, please tell me.

==========

Well, that didn't take long:

Subject: Military Virtue

The quote "To spit on your hands and lower the pike; to stand fast over the body of Leonidas the King; to be rear guard at Kunu-Ri; to stand and be still to the Birkenhead Drill; these are not rational acts. They are often merely necessary." Pournelle comes from Mercenaries and Military Virtue, as published in There Will Be War. About three quarters of the way down page 255 in my old edition.

Graves

Thanks. That's the first volume of the There Will Be War anthology series, which has the title There Will Be War. It has a publication date of 1983.  I'll have to go look: and indeed I found it. It's a pretty good little essay on Mercenaries and Military Virtue. I don't think I have an electronic copy of it anywhere. Indeed, I don't seem to have machine readable copies of many of the essays I wrote in the early 80's. I should find someone to type in "Mercenaries and Military Virtue", or perhaps if I ever catch up I'll do it myself, since this is always the slow season for subscriptions. I suppose I could find some way to scan it, but the truth is I no longer have a scanner and I don't really want to learn how to use one. I suspect we'll find a way, because the essay is worth reposting.

And now I really do have to (1) get the mail up, (2) get the column done, and (3) do a few hundred words of Mamelukes. And we have something social this evening. For some reason, daylight savings time hasn't added any more hours to me day, either.

Meanwhile you might want to contemplate the implications of this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/
2/hi/asia-pacific/7933171.stm?
custom_name_input=harlow

Is this a Chinese government test of Obama? One doubts that the sailors thought of this on their own. Of course they are very sensitive about Hainan Island.

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009    

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128
_3-10192431-54.html?tag=nl.e433

Yet one more breathless announcement of renewable energy, green and clean, just around the corner. Of course it costs about five times as much as we're using, and they can use a few billion more for development to make it economic, but there will be Green Pie in the Sky Bye and Bye. Somehow if it's green we need not pay attention to the laws of physics, nor yet of economics. It's Green! Isn't that enough?

Well, no. Pollution control, like economic growth, is primarily a function of the cost of energy. As I pointed out in A Step Farther Out, with cheap energy we can take pollutants apart, down to their constituent elements if that's needed; there is never a pollution problem if you have enough cheap energy.

For a pdf copy of A Step Farther Out, click here:

For those who tried this yesterday and got the wrong thing or it didn't work at all, email me. I'll fix things. And I have created a new button which ought to work properly in future. Apologies.

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

I'm grinding on output today. Michael was over this morning and we threw away a lot of junk. I can actually see most of the furniture in the Great Hall. Another couple of days like this and I'll be able to have visitors upstairs, and actual tea parties. Slowly I catch up.

The good news is that thanks to Doug and Marge Thomas, I have an electronic copy of Mercenaries and Military Virtue, which was the introduction to a David Drake novel which I turned into a stand-alone essay for There Will Be War. I just got it and it looks to be very cleanly done. I'll have it posted with a page and URL of its own before the end of the week. My thanks! It's a fairly decent little essay if I do say so. Reflects sentiments of the early 80's; I may or may not add a post-script. Just now I'm dancing as fast as I can, so I can't get to it for a day or so.

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

Niven and I will be signing books at 4 PM next Saturday, March 14, at

Mysterious Galaxy Books
7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
Suite #302
San Diego, CA 92111
Tel: 858.268.4747

  That's just east of  the 805 Freeway.

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

 

 

 

 

 

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Wednesday,  March 11, 2009

I finally got the column done, and I've been doing words for Mamelukes. I am not caught up, but I am a bit less behind. A copy of the column has been sent to Platinum subscribers. It should be up on Chaos Manor Reviews by tomorrow. It has also been sent to Tokyo and Istanbul and Sao Paulo.

The essay Mercenaries and Military Virtue is now posted as a report. A version of this was originally written as the preface for a David Drake novel; I revised it and in 1983 published it as a stand alone essay in There Will Be War. I've been thumbing through that book; it has some pretty good stories in it, and a couple of good essays, too. I note there's an essay  description of THOR, a kinetic energy bombardment system that I first described some time in the 60's.

======

Niven and I will be signing books at 4 PM next Saturday, March 14, at

Mysterious Galaxy Books
7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
Suite #302
San Diego, CA 92111
Tel: 858.268.4747

  That's just east of  the 805 Freeway.

==========

We have a new spending bill that is different from what we would have had from the Republicans: it is, apparently, even larger than they would have attempted. The President doesn't seem thrilled with it; as Jimmy Carter found out, being President doesn't give you control of the Congressional committee chairpeople. Carter described those as ravening wolves.

We also have a major speech on education. I didn't hear it. All I have heard is snippets from news and talk shows, which is not a sound basis for comment. The education system is in terrible trouble, and throwing more money at it is not going to fix it. President Obama has the political capital to take on the powers that keep the system broken; it isn't clear whether he'll use it for that purpose.

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

Obama's Education Speech

Dr. Pournelle --

I pass this on without comment as I haven't had a chance to read it, either.

Text of President Obama's education speech
http://www.ledgerdelaware.com/articles/
2009/03/10/news/doc49b71b5ac202c436235964.txt 

Pieter

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Thursday,  March 11, 2009

I have appointments and errands all day today. I'll catch up this evening.

 

Niven and I will be signing books at 4 PM next Saturday, March 14, at

Mysterious Galaxy Books
7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
Suite #302
San Diego, CA 92111
Tel: 858.268.4747

  That's just east of  the 805 Freeway.

It has been a day of grinding.

 

 

 

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Friday,  March 12, 2009

Friday the 13th falls on Friday

I expect to spend the day working on Mamelukes and other works. I have posted much mail including a good one on education with reply.

Niven and I will be signing books tomorrow (Saturday, March 14), at

Mysterious Galaxy Books
7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
Suite #302
San Diego, CA 92111
Tel: 858.268.4747

  That's just east of  the 805 Freeway.

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

I will be working for the rest of the day. There's more mail.

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

I don't expect any of you to bite on this, but I now have an email supposedly from the FBI about Nigerian scams; it invites me to register with

fbi.federalinvestigationdept at gmail.com . I do not think I will be doing that.... There is also a telephone number that, I suspect, costs a great deal of money per minute if you call it. They seem to be getting more clever all the time...

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

 

 

 

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Saturday,  March 14, 2009

I have a book signing in an hour.

Mysterious Galaxy Books
7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
Suite #302
San Diego, CA 92111
Tel: 858.268.4747

  That's just east of  the 805 Freeway.

 

=====

Codevilla: Osama bin Elvis.

<http://spectator.org/archives/2009/03/13/osama-bin-elvis/print>

-- Roland Dobbins

Angelo Codevilla speculates that Osama is long dead. His reasoning is persuasive.

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

I have seen the following.

Bjørn Lomborg: Genetically modified food offers hope for the world's malnourished

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/
19_1_snd-genetic-modification.html 

It is said to be another Green Revolution. I don't know if that's true, but being able to grow more food cannot be a bad thing. I have not looked at the side effects. There are always side effects. There were to the First Green Revolution as well.

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

And yet another instance of the Iron Law at work:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_germany_bill_odd

 ==========

 

 

 

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Sunday,  March 15, 2009

The Ides of March

Birthday of the late Stefan T. Possony

We're back home. It was a good book signing at Mysterious Galaxy. For some odd reason I have been getting almost no mail yesterday and today, perhaps because I said I'd be off working and people actually paid attention, but the flow of spam has also been cut way back. I have only two junk mails since 5 this evening. Perhaps the spammers take Sunday afternoons off?

I started watching KINGS, but it didn't seem all that interesting. Perhaps I was wrong and I should have watched it. It seems to have some kind of premise, but it's not one easily understood, and I didn't watch long enough to get all of it. It may be that I'll find out I missed something important. If so I make no doubt I'll get another chance to see it.

I'm still working on fiction, but I'll have more for this place next week. The Chairman of the Fed was on 60 Minutes tonight. Roberta asked if I believed him. I said I want to believe him.

Meanwhile the air waves are aflame with the news that AIG executives, the ones who went out and made all those silly bets on derivatives and bankrupted AID -- the one in charge of the financial products division, which is the creative outfit that did all the derivative betting -- those executives will get about $150 million in bonuses. These were contracted back when AIG was flush, and their purpose was to keep those geniuses on the payroll -- they might have gone somewhere else if they hadn't been promised bonuses. Or course now the bonuses are being paid by the American taxpayers, many of whom can't pay their taxes because their savings have tumbled in value.  But at least we have the services of the smartest guys in the world, the ones who set up these offsets and guarantees and innovative financial products. They'll stay on, because they'll have their bonuses.  I do wonder who would hire them if they decided to go look for better jobs....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the weekly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 8,000 - 12,000 words, depending.  (Older columns here.) For more on what this page is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE. If you have never read the explanatory material on that page, please do so. If  you got here through a link that didn't take you to the front page of this site, click here for a better explanation of what we're trying to do here. This site is run on the "public radio" model; see below.

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