March 2012 – Page 2 – Chaos Manor

Zimmerman, contraception, mercenary arsenals, fusion, and other interesting stuff

By Jerry Pournelle | Mar 28, 2012 - 12:57 am | Updated: March 28, 2012 - 10:00 pm | Mail, View

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Mail 717 Tuesday , March 27, 2012

Not a complete mailbag, but a couple of topics are topical so to speak.

Black Panther Party has offered reward for Zimmerman’s ‘capture’

It amazes me that this could happen and that the media gives it a pass:

Zimmerman has gone into hiding. A fringe group, the New Black Panther Party, has offered a $10,000 reward for his "capture."

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-26/news/os-trayvon-martin-zimmerman-account-20120326_1_miami-schools-punch-unarmed-black-teenager

Tracy

Few things have amazed me recently. Incidentally, the radio today reports that the Black Panther Party has raised the ‘reward’ for information on Zimmerman’s whereabouts. All races are equal, of course…

Media Bias?

Anon

I have no provenance for these pictures, but I have them from more than one source. It is an interesting question.

This just in:

Jerry,

I just wanted to let you know that the photo in the bottom right of the montage that is supposedly a photo of an older Treyvon Martin is an admitted fake. Please see this report from Fox News online: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/03/27/media-matters-honcho-sorry-after-blasting-drudge-for-trayvon-photo/?intcmp=obinsite.

There is more on this in tomorrow’s View. It all illustrates the point I have been trying to make: given the state of journalism we are not likely to get the facts, and there is no reason to conclude that the local authorities, who are a lot closer to this, have not or will not act properly. We can’t nationalize all events. If we did we would drown.

TSA

Sounds like someone might be reading your blog in congress, which I believe you have always suspected if not knew.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/03/congressional_t.html

Bob Gates

I know for a fact that at least two Congressmen and staffers of at least half a dozen more regularly read these posts.

Private arsenal ships

Jerry, I get regular newsletters from military.com. Today’s included a link to an article

(http://defensetech.org/2012/03/22/private-arsenal-ships-in-the-fight-against-piracy/)

about how private security companies are maintaining floating arsenals in international waters off of Somalia. The idea is that merchantmen should be able to protect themselves from pirates but there are laws against armed ships entering some ports, for obvious reasons. The biggest problem with this is the complete lack of safety standards and, in fact, even the companies running them are concerned because they don’t want any accidents or thefts either.

J

I seem to remember some similar problems for Mike Hoare’s outfits in the Katanga days. I can pretty well guarantee that putting blue helmets on troops doesn’t really make them less mercenary or more reliable when it comes to safety regulations…

Subject: 4-Year-Old’s Drawing Leads to Dad’s Arrest

I want to believe there was more to this story, but in today’s environment, I’m not sure any more.

From the article:

“One day last week at school Jessie Sansone’s 4-year-old daughter drew a picture of a man with a gun. The teacher didn’t like it, so she called Family and Social Services. If you think that’s an outrageous overreaction, just wait.

According to the Calgary Herald, when Jessie went to pick up his daughter and his other children at the end of the day, he was handcuffed, arrested, and strip searched <http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Father+arrested+girl+picture/6209132/story.html> , as they looked for this gun. They did actually find one after they went and searched the family’s home in Ontario … only it turned out to be a toy. Yes, the only gun in the entire house was a toy gun. “

http://thestir.cafemom.com/toddler/133600/4yearolds_drawing_leads_to_dads?quick_picks=1

Tracy

A startling story, but I am not familiar with the Canadian constitution. This sort of activity was a major factor in the Independence movements prior to 1776. Of course it could happen here…

Prostitutes have political power! =)

<.>

Spain’s high-class escorts are refusing to have sex with the nation’s bankers – until they open up credit lines to cash-strapped families and firms.

Madrid’s top-end prostitutes say their indefinite strike will continue until bank employees ‘fulfil their responsibility to society’ and start offering bigger loans for struggling Spaniards, it has been claimed.

Sneaky bankers were trying to circumvent the protest by claiming to be architects or engineers, the sex-workers said.

</>

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2120984/Spains-high-class-hookers-ban-sex-bankers-provide-credit-cash-strapped-economy.html?ITO=1490

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

your nuclear power comment

A couple of weeks ago Michio Kaku was a guest on Coast to Coast and in passing mentioned that there’s a French experimental reactor that is trying to get HOT fusion up and running. He said they’re close and expect to be generating power in about 8 years.

I don’t know if I misheard him or not but I’ve seen nothing on this anywhere.

Have you heard anything about it ?

george senda

I have not seen anything on this. My last serious inquiry into fusion power led me to conclude that we know how to build a large and expensive device that would, using fusion, produce more energy than it consumed (provided that you could collect much of the heat wasted in confining the reaction) but it would not be economically break even, and building a demonstration unit would be extremely expensive. Two decades ago I thought inertial confinement and laser triggers would make fusion devices a great deal cheaper, but I have seen nothing on that either. I confess that my enthusiasm for fusion now has faded since for thirty years it has been there will be fusion Real Soon Now. Eventually it will happen, but there are other things we have to develop first, I think.

I have had this mail for weeks:

President Obama & the E.U. “Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities”

Dr Pournelle,

I hope you’re feeling well enough to give your thoughts on this N.Y.

Times op-ed by John Bolton & John Yoo on the Obama administration’s unofficial adherence to the E.U.’s draft treaty on outer-space activities, including restrictions on the militarization of space:

<http://nytimes.com/2012/03/09/opinion/hands-off-the-heavens.html>,

“Hands Off the Heavens”.

I know this issue is important to you. I’ve been borrowing your “There Will be War” series from the Brooklyn Public Library, and I’m sure that American military presence in space is not much less important now than it was in the ’80s.

—Joel Salomon

I covered most of the principles on this in The Strategy of Technology. Space will be decisive and if you have no ability to defend your access to space you may very much wish you had. Take the high ground, boy, or they’ll kick hell out of you in the valleys.

Contraception

Contraception is pretty much universally available and affordable here in the US, yet the very people that you would think would most avail themselves of it don’t. http://neoneocon.com/2012/02/18/over-50-of-births-to-mothers-under-30-are-outside-marriage/ Digging into the data it seems that it is 59% among young Hispanic women and 78% among Blacks. This is an unmitigated disaster (particularly for the children) whose wave, I suspect, has not yet crested and to which government will inevitably turn its attention. In this regard the legislation mandating the universal availability of free contraception is not only a boon for Big Pharma, but a necessary precondition for a government mandate to **employ** contraception. The ‘Progressive’ welfare state has created a problem which can (notionally) only be solved by an even more controlling welfare state. There won’t be any unanticipated side effects, I’m sure; it’s all good. Strangely, I’m missing the troglodytic, pitchfork waving mobs burning down condom and pill factories. Perhaps they are only deemed to have rioted and burned.

Certain contraceptives seem to be a major cause of blood clots in women. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cts=1331257756266&ved=0CGAQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webmd.com%2Fsex%2Fbirth-control%2Fnews%2F20111026%2Fnewer-birth-control-pills-may-double-blood-clot-risk&ei=fmFZT6CTE8eZiQLVlrHOCw&usg=AFQjCNE8osVr3Kexnui7VIWGUI8r7SdZyg&sig2=JgRZZM0Fbxi4zPaCRCZtxA

Women’s health is not really the driving force behind this movement.

Regarding Ms. Fluke and her alleged constituents, $1,000 a year on contraceptives would seem to indicative of a certain energetic and sustained focus on the prevention of the consequences of procreative activities. But perhaps they are merely obsessive compulsive consumers of these products rather than practitioners of pillow arts; better not to use nasty words in the absence of evidence; probability we’ll just ignore.

As for Malthusian prophecies, I have become sceptical. I clearly recall predictions that 25% of Americans would starve by 1990, and someone even went so far as to suggest the extermination of India as a realistic, if temporary solution to world overpopulation. The panic seems to have been a bit premature. What saved us? I submit: human ingenuity. Panic is still premature.

Leo Walker

Universal Health Care

A point from one of your commenters:

"Its time that we get past the idea of universal health care. Every industrialized, forward looking country has some type of universal coverage and it shows in their health statistics. The US if falling way behind in infant mortality, life-span and general health. This impacts us economically, and reduces our ability to compete."

He is the one behind the times. The truth is that all of these "forward looking" countries (and ours) have huge piles of debt. Politicians will promise anything to gain support, and just like Athens in ancient Greece or Athens today, it will catch up with us. I say "us" instead of "them" because this problem has been pushed off in the grand style of Louis the XIV "Apres moi, le deluge". There is nothing new under the sun and human nature is basically consistent. Bills always come due and you can never make specific calls on what is the best way for the economy to be micromanaged. The idea that macro economics is different than micro is absurd on its face, yet the "progressives" still insist that they just need to spend a bit more for the good of all and things will be perfect.

Damon

The one thing you can be sure of is that someone will pay soldiers.

Saw your mention of your "tendency to overly long and complex sentences" and realized that the sentence itself might be a case in

point: 72 words, 4 commas, 1 semi-colon, and 1 period. Also 6 pronouns, 6 proper names, and 6 verbs. I also count at least four separate timeframes-as-point-of-view (present, past retrospective to present, past influencing expectations of the present, past retrospective to present (again), present, and past). On the gripping hand, the sentence was perfectly and easily undersandable on first reading.

"Niven and Barnes and I have developed pretty good editorial habits and we’ve worked together long enough to know some of each other’s weaknesses, such as my tendency to overly long and complex sentences and Steve’s addiction to gerunds, so our works are generally well edited; having said that I don’t want to diminish the contribution of editors like Ed Kuehn, Bob Gleason, and Jim Baen on our works in the past."

Once in High School I decided to see just how long a sentence I could write. It ended up being shortly over one page, long-hand, on wide-ruled paper. Didn’t actually *say* much, but I said it verbosely and within the bounds of proper English grammar. I think I had you beat by a bit (at least in number of semi-colons), but if I kept it I don’t know where the page would be. And it still wouldn’t be worth re-reading except for the same amusement value that caused its creation.

You keep on writing and I’ll keep on reading. Unlike my younger self, you have a lot to say that’s worth saying.

–Gary P.

I was impressed by Macaulay at an early age and never got over it…

Zero trust in the professional force

http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=29019

"The U.S. Navy will start giving Breathalyzer tests to Marines and sailors reporting for duty aboard ships and submarines and at squadrons, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced Monday in a worldwide call to forces."

I see many results to come from this, none desirable. Provided, that is, that the goal is to improve the defense of the United States.

works and days…

By Jerry Pournelle | Mar 28, 2012 - 12:22 am | Updated: March 28, 2012 - 12:22 am | View

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View 718 Tuesday, March 27, 2012

My love affair with the Thermaltake Case continues, but alas the new system isn’t finished: there appear to be problems with the motherboard. Not with the case and not caused by the case. Our difficulties have to do with installation, but things worked well enough that I found that this massive elegant case is very quiet as well as easy to service.

But we didn’t get the system going yet. I’m shooting for Windows 8, and if that is too much trouble we’ll drop back to Windows 7; and meanwhile we’ll keep all the older machines until the new one is trustworthy. I always keep several machines in operation and my backup system besides home server is mostly to be sure everything important is copied all over the place. There are better ways, but this is an old habit.

Much of the day was devoured by locusts again, and more work piles up. And I have to make ready for the big conference in Colorado Springs next Monday and Tuesday; Space Command is having a conference/symposium. I also have contest finals to judge, housekeeping stuff, errands, and I have been trying to throw out junk as we do excavation down to the layers that accumulated when I was getting my hard x-ray treatment. And they have scheduled another MRI which ought to be routine.

And we found just enough errors in the eBook publication of The Secret of Black Ship Island, and I went through it all today to find them. Most are trivial – Forward instead of Foreword, some stray and/or missing carriage returns, a couple of run-on words, and an actual scene inconsistency which I won’t call attention to but Dave Kenny did. My thanks! Anyway that had to be fixed and I found a bunch of minor errors when I went through the published edition – all fairly trivial, one run-on word (andall) and as I said, some small formatting errors. I should have them all noted and off to our agent, and Kristine will be able to fix them in one pass. Anyone who bought the novella from Amazon will be able to trade it in on a free upgraded copy when we’re done.

From reader comments including Mr. Kenny’s the minor errors aren’t enough to spoil the reading experience, but it’s still our job to produce the best copy we can. Mr. Heinlein drilled that into my head from earliest days in the racket. We owe the reader our best effort – and now that we are both authors and publishers we have a bit more to do. I have always appreciated the copy editors who have worked with our books all these years, (even though copy editors are popularly referred to as the class enemy by most authors): Now I appreciate them even more. It’s tough work.

I’ll also get up a mail bag tonight. There’s more information on the Zimmerman/Martin case. Some is shocking.

Zimmerman-Martin, alas poor ornithopter, and other matters

By Jerry Pournelle | Mar 27, 2012 - 12:30 am | Updated: March 27, 2012 - 12:30 am | Mail

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Mail 718 Monday, March 26, 2012

Martin-Zimmerman Story

Jerry,

Most of the coverage of this case is sloppy, and some of the sloppiness seems deliberately inflammatory. Take a look at these if you want what’s actually known so far.

– The Orlando Sentinel with leaked info from the local PD (since pretty much confirmed as authentic by the local city manager in the course of saying he wants an investigation of the leak.)

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-26/news/os-trayvon-martin-zimmerman-account-20120326_1_miami-schools-punch-unarmed-black-teenager

– ABC News with an account from Martin’s girlfriend, who was on the phone with him at the time.

http://gma.yahoo.com/trayvon-martin-shooter-told-cops-teenager-went-gun-030349812–abc-news.html

and more from the girlfriend in the Orlando Sentinel

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-20/news/os-trayvon-martin-girlfriend-speaks-details-20120320_1_shooting-death-gated-attorneys

The mob wants to crucify Zimmerman. Looks to me the local cops made the right call; there’s no case there. If anything, there’d be more of a case (not much, but more) against Martin for assault and battery, if Zimmerman hadn’t made the point moot.

sign me

Porkypine

One more data point – Martin was caught with a bunch of women’s jewelry plus a large flat-blade screwdriver in his bag at school last October.

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/26/3515140/multiple-suspensions-paint-complicated.html

One reason Zimmerman was out patrolling was because of multiple recent burglaries in the neighborhood. I’d be curious when they started, versus when Martin came to stay in the neighborhood. Also, was he on a reasonable route from the store he’d been to back to where he was staying when Zimmerman followed him, or wandering somewhere else?

Not proof of anything either way, of course, but indicative. I won’t hold my breath to see answers to these, mind. Even asking the questions doesn’t fit the "innocent martyr to gun-toting racism" narrative.

Porkypine

I have more mail on this, but most of it points to this being a case for the local authorities, and indicates that the original investigating officers made the right decision. The reopening of this may have been no real favor to Mr. Martin’s family. Our local radio talk show dug into the records and although they continue to demean Mr. Zimmerman, they have broadcast that Mr. Zimmerman made an average of 2 911 calls a year.

Re: Crime Procedurals

"I don’t think I have read more than one crime procedural novel taking place in Florida"

Well maybe they don’t actually count as ‘crime pprocedurals’ in a normal way (as Elmore Leonard’s don’t either) but the Travis McGee stories by John D. MacDonald surely count in my estimation.

As to Special Prosecutors, one particular failure of G.W.Bush in my mind was that he did not, *immediately* upon learning the Patrick Fitzgerald KNEW from Armitage’s confession, that no-one else was quilty of anything, fire Fitzgerald ‘with prejudice’ and pardon Libby.

It is to my mind unconscionable that a ‘special prosecutor’ should question anyone about anything when the object of the prosecutional investigation has been determined.

It was as far as I can tell, GWB’s only failure of nerve. He knew that the MSM would howl, and he left Libby in the wind, when he was legally and morally in the right to stop the investigation at that point, and to punish Fitzgerald for his arrogance and tyranny.

My $.02 worth

Geoff

Special Prosecutors find something to prosecute or they have nothing to do. So they keep looking. I think it is a very bad thing to do. The Constitution makes Congress the Grand Inquest of the Nation, but it has seldom functioned so. I do not think that was GWB’s only failure of nerve, but it was a major one.

I have a flood of mail on keyboards, and I will have a report on keyboards I can recommend. I have ordered two keyboards to try out; I had standardized on the Microsoft Comfortcurve keyboards until I started thinking about it and realized that although I have several of them including on my writing maches (one running a ThinkPad, for instance) I actually type faster on this Ortek. I hoave thought that before and then let the thought go because there ain’t no more Ortek boards.

Mechanical Keyboard Club!

Jerry

Once upon a time I was looking into mechanical keyboards. I started here:

http://www.overclock.net/t/538389/mechanical-keyboard-club/0_30

Not being a fan of clicky keyboards, I settled on one that I can’t remember. I foolishly deleted my bookmarks on the subject. I recall that I was looking for white backlights to work in the dark, silent keys but that clicky feel. Most of the best switches are by Cherry these days.

A decent one (a Das kb) seems to be here: http://www.daskeyboard.com/model-s-professional-silent/

Another good one (Filco Majestouch): http://www.diatec.co.jp/en/det.php?prod_c=757

Ah! Found my keyboard: http://www.deckkeyboards.com/product_info.php?products_id=95

It’s the Deck Legend – Frost (tactile). And it’s big. “The Deck 105 key Legend measures 18.5" long x 7" deep x 2" high (with feet raised) and weighs 3.5 pounds. Cable length is approximately 6 feet (exposed). Tactile feedback switches (Cherry MX1A-C1NW, clear).”

Yup. This is the one. I still want it, actually. But my 1997 Dell is still holding up so well I can’t justify the purchase.

Ed

Ed also adds:

Jerry

One more thing: the place that specializes in keyboard enthusiasts is http://geekhack.org/

Ed

I have an old keyboard. Like your ‘old’ it is very very very old. A MaxiSwitch MaxiTouch Model 2189022xx PN 218902200-21200.

This is a full size, heavy, PROGRAMMABLE keyboard with a separate Insaert/Home/Page section and number section. A full 20" wide by 8"

deep. Solid, heavy, well built.

Iirc I ordered it because you wrote a review about it. Nice medium to heavy key action, No click, but I HATED that about the IBM keyboards.

This is very close to the IBMin feel.

Still in the cupboard as a backup, with a DIN to PS2 adapter rubber banded onto the end of the cable. And I saw the Manual not too long ago.

It explains the programming features. Macros at your fingertips.

If you want it, just say the word and give me an address, and I will drop it off at Fedex, paid from my end, as a ‘Non-returnable Review sample’!! I would consider it my donation to the cause. But only if you expect that it will not just become an aggregation to the midden known as Chaos Manor!

But I have given up on cables, since I need extensions to reach from the computer case beside the credenza, up into the credenza to the keyboard slide. Now using a Logitech DiNovo which is a bluetooth cordless kb + mouse combo. I don’t think I could go back to a corded mouse. But if IBM made a cordless keyboard with a trackpoint, I’d be THERE in a flash (they only make a corded trackpoint’ed version).

Geoff

This will do until I get some boards in to try.

Jerry

What would it be like to live on the evil side of an alternate universe portal?

http://www.gocomics.com/brewsterrockit/2012/03/25

Ed

Brewster Rocket knows…

One comment to the letter from "Stephanie S" regarding Pfizer’s prospective profits under Obamacare: history has shown that socialized medicine is not a boon for the pharmaceutical companies, as expensive new remedies are never funded for implementation. Even the European pharmaceuticals today make up their R&D money proving new drugs in the US market, as they are obligated to provide any new remedies at a small markup on cost elsewhere — if they make that much.

Admittedly, Obamacare was sold as a boon to the pharmaceuticals in the short term. That was just one more lie…

The market system has done well for the United States. Adding a safety net when we can afford it is a nice thing to do, but charity works better on that. Political systems can’t really distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor, and that makes a difference, as you will find if you have to make several trips to an emergency room and are observant.

Aristotle tells us that injustice consists of treating equal things unequally and also of treating unequal things equally.

The main difference between Germany, Japan, and Afghanistan.

The main difference between Germany, Japan, and Afghanistan is that Germany is inhabited by Germans and governed by Germans; Japan is inhabited by Japanese and governed by Japanese; and Afghanistan is inhabited by Pashtuns, Gilzais, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazara, Almaks, Turkmen, Balochs, etc., and is governed by no one.

–

Roland Dobbins

That is certainly an important difference. And Iraq consists of Arab Shiities, Arab Sunni, Arab Baathist atheists, and Kurds who aren’t Arabs at all. Plus some other diversities. If diversity is a good thing for a democracy they have it. Usually diversity promotes empire or did historically. Indeed the Hittites and their Trojan neighbors (who were said to be the founders of Rome had the trick of bringing in and assimilating different peoples and having them become loyal to the state. The Greek democracies never did learn that trick. Rome did…

Various

Jerry,

In response to your Sunday Chaos Manor:-

There is great educational value in having Wiki bookmarked on the screen when reading your postings. For example I now know what a J curve is and the meaning of isentropic.

The traditional way of sinking submarines was to drop a series of bombs each about the size of a 45 gallon barrel at the place where you hoped the submarine would be when the bomb arrived. This was not particularly effective. It was then realised by some OR type that there was a reason that flying birds are not hunted with rifles but with shotguns which fire a projectile with an effective diameter of a couple of feet. Hence hedgehog, a sort of marinised mortar shell, fused to explode on contact. A small explosion in contact with the pressure hull did the business, could be carried in very large numbers, and didn’t deafen your sonar.

In comparing the success of WW2 occupations with the present efforts you left out one of the factors essential for success. In 1943 the United States began training the administrators who were to run the captured territories. Then when they were needed they were fluent in the local language and had a good grasp of local administration. The Iraqi people, not to be confused with the Iraqi armed forces, never felt defeated and some continued the war using new tactics for which the occupiers had no effective counter. It is far worse in Afghanistan. Here each man, family, and village constitutes it’s own armed forces. The only way to bring peace to such a country is to defeat, ie., kill them in detail. What Tacitus once described as making a desert and then calling it peace. Not a sensible way to spend borrowed money even if the money can never be repaid.

John Edwards

When the military were conquering Iraq in the early days of the war, the generals told the Iraqi generals to keep their troops in barracks, keep them orderly, and “you will have an honorable place in the rebuilding of Iraq.” Then came Bremer who sent the Iraqi army home armed and unemployed. The worst proconsul since the Romans led legions into that desert …

Medieval warming WAS global – new science contradicts IPCC

Once again, you are proven right…

Medieval warming WAS global – new science contradicts IPCC More peer-reviewed science contradicting the warming-alarmist "scientific consensus" was announced yesterday, as a new study shows that the well-documented warm period which took place in medieval times was not limited to Europe, or the northern hemisphere: it reached all the way to Antarctica.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/23/warm_period_little_ice_age_global/

Abstract:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X12000659

Calcium carbonate can crystallize in a hydrated form as ikaite at low temperatures. The hydration water in ikaite grown in laboratory experiments records the δ18O of ambient water, a feature potentially useful for reconstructing δ18O of local seawater. We report the first downcore δ18O record of natural ikaite hydration waters and crystals collected from the Antarctic Peninsula (AP), a region sensitive to climate fluctuations. We are able to establish the zone of ikaite formation within shallow sediments, based on porewater chemical and isotopic data.

Having constrained the depth of ikaite formation and δ18O of ikaite crystals and hydration waters, we are able to infer local changes in fjord δ18O versus time during the late Holocene. This ikaite record qualitatively supports that both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age extended to the Antarctic Peninsula.

Description: Horizontal_Line

Chuck Ruthroff

The greatest mistake you can make is to be continually fearing you will make one. — Elbert Hubbard

I try to pay attention to all the evidence. Novelists need to be plausible, attorneys need to accumulate evidence, but scientists must account for ALL the data… http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/voodoo.html

Moon News

This is big news, but not so big when you think about it and I’ll get to that at the end.

<.>

In the new research, published online today in Nature Geoscience, geochemists led by Junjun Zhang at the University of Chicago in Illinois, together with a colleague at the University of Bern in Switzerland, looked at titanium isotopes in 24 separate samples of lunar rock and soil. The proportion of 50Ti to 47Ti is another good indicator of whether a sample came from Earth, and, just as with oxygen, the researchers found the moon’s proportion was effectively the same as Earth’s and different from elsewhere in the solar system. Zhang explains that it’s unlikely Earth could have exchanged titanium gas with the magma disk because titanium has a very high boiling point. "The oxygen isotopic composition would be very easily homogenized because oxygen is much more volatile, but we would expect homogenizing titanium to be very difficult."

So, if the giant impact hypothesis doesn’t explain the moon, how did it get there? One possibility is that a glancing blow from a passing body left Earth spinning so rapidly that it threw some of itself off into space like a shot put, forming the disk that coalesced into the moon. This would explain why the moon seems to be made entirely of Earth material. But there are problems with this model, too, such as the difficulty of explaining where all the extra angular momentum went after the moon formed, and the researchers aren’t claiming to have refuted the giant impact hypothesis.

</>

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/03/findings-cast-doubt-on-moon-orig.html?ref=hp

The models I saw showed a planet hitting the earth in a glancing blow and creating the moon. This theory is not completely inconsistent with the old one. Something could have hit the Earth, causing the spin that planet may have kept going. I think we are fine tuning a larger theory here, but this article frames it as if we are going in a whole new direction. I don’t think the author of this article saw any of the mathematical models or computer models on the subject. What do you think?

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I fear I have not thought much about it. I have heard many “exciting new” theories of the origin of the moon over the decades.

Interesting thing the President said overheard

Jerry,

What an interesting thing to say. What positions will change after voter opinion doesn’t matter?

"This is my last election," Obama told Medvedev. "After my election I have more flexibility."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/26/open-mic-catches-obama-asking-russian-president-for-space-on-missile-defense/?hpt=hp_t3

Seriously, wow. This is a hell of a lot more than merely asking for negotiating room, but the media is presenting this as a simple request to tone down rhetoric for a while instead of a signal that the President will make some real foreign policy changes as soon as he has no internal political consequences for doing so.

To refresh our memory on the President’s starting position:

http://macsmind.com/wordpress/2008/06/08/obama-wants-to-protect-america/

Is that where policy is going after the election?

Please withhold my name, since Tennyson had it right. Theirs not to wonder why…

As a former troop I can wonder in public…

‘Is the Kindle changing the reading habits of science fiction readers?’

<http://jameswharris.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/what-is-the-kindle-doing-to-the-science-fiction-genre/>

——

Roland Dobbins

The Kindle is changing the reading habits of a very large part of the reading public… I now sell more eBooks than print books.

Live and Let Spy.

<http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_preview/12266>

<http://www.amazon.com/Live-Let-Spy-BRIXMIS-ebook/dp/B00724WU2I/>

–

Roland Dobbins

Ornithopter

Dr. Pournelle,

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the ornithopter guy did, indeed, fake it.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/diy-flying/why-its-so-hard-to-build-a-human-powered-winged-aircraft-7539894?click=pm_news

Still nice to dream about, though.

Ben

Ben Barlow

Alas.

Cases and keyboards

By Jerry Pournelle | Mar 26, 2012 - 5:50 pm | Updated: March 26, 2012 - 5:50 pm | View

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View 718 Monday, March 26, 2012

We are working on the new Sandy Bridge machine. I have a huge pile of components from Thermaltake, including a power supply that Eric says would power a village, and the most spectacular case I have ever seen. It will all be in the column.

There’s also a gamer’s keyboard. It has mechanical keys, and they feel great, but it also has the compact layout that, I guess, killer gamers prefer: that layout is too small for me. I love the key feel, but I want the keys further apart; but then my goal is not to be a gaming challenger. This keyboard is for killers, with its high polling race, and I suppose gamers like keyboards with a more compact layout. I’m impressed with this Ttesports MEKA by Thermaltake, but it won’t be the keyboard that replaced my wonderful old Ortek.

I’ve been making do on most of my systems with Microsoft Comfort Curve keyboards, and I do like them, but the keys don’t feel right compared to my wonderful old Ortek. I sure wish I had bought half a dozen of these old keyboards when they were available, but as time goes on machines are more and more demanding USB keyboards, which of course the Ortek wasn’t.

I have a ton of mail on this subject and I am sure I will get more, but I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do about the keyboard situation.

What I need is a full sized keyboard, not curved – I thought I liked curved but I seem to be able to type faster with straight lines – and clicky. I like having programmable keys. And I want a full sized layout.

Construction of the new machine continues. We’re using the Thermaltake case. It’s costly – but I already wish I had had that available when we built Emily, the Intel Extreme system that this new one will replace. I am fond of Antec cases, and they have been standard at Chaos Manor for years, but the model we chose for Emily turns out to have been an experimental design that just didn’t work. It attempted to do what the Thermaltake has done – make it very easy to maintain and upgrade hardware on a high end system. Full writeup coming, but I would have paid for this Thermaltake case when we were building Emily had I But Known. It is really designed to make life easier for those who have to update and maintain high end systems. So far we have not got the system done so I can’t recommend it yet, but I love the design. The Thermaltake is so fancy in presentation that you at first don’t appreciate the design features which make it easy to get at the components and change them without having to use tools and pull the system out of its installation. And the internal cable routings and such are very nice. More when we finish it but my first impressions are highly favorable, and while the cost is high, anyone who has to maintain high end systems will realize that it’s worth money to save time and frustration – or so I have learned trying to keep Emily up to snuff.

Again more later when we have got the new system running, but as Eric just noted, it’s a bit like building a sports car and finding out that they’ve really worked on making the maintenance easy.

We have had a brushup caused by a bad DVD blank disk (a generic – don’t use them!) rendering Emily unusable then requiring a restart from power down, and of course the horrible case – again you can’t buy one of that design, it was a temporary and it seemed pretty good when we installed it, but it uses a goofy hinge front system that breaks easily – anyway the horrid case cost an hour of mucking about getting Emily running again so we could burn a Windows 8 disk. Finally all is well.

The Florida Zimmerman/Martin case continues to take up time and energy, but it is clear enough to me that there are unresolved – perhaps unresolvable – ambiguities, and we aren’t going to settle it on general principles. We have a conflict of rights situation, and the details matter. Martin had every right to walk through the neighborhood. Zimmerman acted a bit like a snoop but apparently didn’t threaten Martin; if there was any interaction it’s not reported. And then everything went to hell.

If ever there was a matter for local authorities to sort out, this is it; and there is no reason for all this national attention. But this is an election year and we have a President desperate for an incident to raise his popularity above the deadly 43% mark. Perhaps this can be made into something. And here we go.

In the meantime there have been dozens of homicides in the US. And there will be more.

Bill Gates seems impressed with the rising CO2 enough that he prefers nuclear power to natural gas. So do I. I agree that we don’t want to run an open ended experiment on how much CO2 we can put into the atmosphere. On the other hand, India’s cows can produce enough CO2 to keep the atmospheric amount rising. If we seriously have to eliminate CO2 additions to below what the ecological system can absorb we are talking about really drastic measures.

More likely we come up with some means of increasing the ecological reduction of CO2 amounts. The method that used to be discussed was adding iron to the sea to cause plankton blooms. A couple of experiments give less promising results than enthusiasts had expected. After that the experiments seem to have stopped. I have lost track of why. I’ll see if I can find out. Clearly, if we are going to limit the CO2 in the atmosphere, we have to find ways to take it out, or change the way we live. Drastically. And probably limit population. That is a formula for war without end.