Monthly Archives: September 2012

View 742 Friday, September 21, 2012

   IMPORTANT SECURITY ANNOUNCEMENT:  UPDATE your Windows 7 OS now.

Close Explorer and manually update Windows and restart. It will take about ten minutes. Do it now. More below.

The Middle East continues to burn, and America continues to apologize for supporting free speech. One suspects the next move will be to redefine hate crimes to include any graphic depiction of Mohammed, and any publication about him that is less than fulsome praise. Next will come a purge of many history books. So it goes.

On the limits of Chinese languages:

In a previous entry https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=9642) I mentioned Sprague de Camp’s observation that the structure of the classical Chinese language limited it to fewer than 14,000 words, which would have severe limits on scientific development; idly speculated that the Whorfian Hypothesis, once important in American anthropology of the Boaz-Mead school, would have generated some conclusions from this but I hadn’t heard it applied to Chinese, and even more idly wondered if this had any influence over Mao’s decision to implement the Great Cultural Revolution.

Last night’s mail https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=9713) had a number of reader comments on how modern China is dealing with the linguistic limitations of the language (one symbol per word, not phonetic; only 412 possible syllables meaning that with tones a total of under 1300 vocables; and an ideographic language in which the written symbols did not correspond to the sounded words. As De Camp said, this places heavy limits on science development. Today I have

Chinese language

Spoke to [my daughters’] Chinese teacher last night. When new concepts arise, they tend to use phonetic equivalents of the actual word or Chinese phonetic equivalents if Chinese root words exist. So when you do end up with a new set of symbols, for example the symbols for Google, they phonetically sound like google, but the symbols have nothing to do with the meaning. She also agreed Chinese are very rooted in tradition and change slowly if at all.

Phil

which is no surprise.

This implies the widespread use of phonetic writing, which is a fundamental change in the very character of the Chinese language. Phonetic languages can be learned by nearly anyone by the end of the equivalent of first grade, after which the reading vocabulary and the speaking vocabulary are essentially the same, while words never heard before can still be read. Ideographic languages can be learned only after years of intensive study. I can recall that in 1950 almost all of the children of the black tenant farmers I knew when growing up could read, but when I got to Japan many of the adult male workers on the US base where I went to school were illiterate in Japanese. I could read from the phrase book and be understood (doubtless I had a terrible accent, but they were too polite to visibly notice), but showing them the phrase printed in Japanese was futile.

Japan at that time had both ideographic and phonetic (syllabic) character sets, and also used “romanji”, which in 1950 used what amounted to standard American English characters to spell out Japanese words (our phrase book showed both, kana characters which of course I couldn’t read as well as the same phrase in romanji which I could). I was young enough and so preoccupied with my Army training that I didn’t keep a proper journal of my experiences at the time. That’s a pity because it was a unique opportunity to observe the complete transition of a culture from a technically proficient ‘modernized’ Imperialism to something else – and at the same time there was a transition in linguistics and literacy. Alas, all I have is some memories from Japan, and of course my experience with China is confined essentially to what I have read.

It did seem to me that up into the 60’s, when I did have some responsibilities in assessing Chinese and Japanese political developments, that there were some fundamental cultural differences, and I wondered at the time if the ideographic Chinese language (which severely limited literacy) had much effect on that; but the Cultural Revolution happened about the time I got into another line of work, and it is pretty clear that whatever Mao did, it had a profound effect on China.

We’re still seeing some of the results of that. Much of what my generation studied about Chinese culture and history was greatly changed by that, and I confess I haven’t kept up; Some years ago, after the Cultural Revolution was done, I was approached by a Peking University professor about two years older than me – we had both been in Korea, obviously on different sides – about spending a year teaching as a visiting professor. I’d been warned by colleagues that this wouldn’t be easy; they expected hard work. It seemed like a great opportunity, and I was seriously considering it, but the discussions were interrupted by the Tiananmen Square events and were never renewed (and I didn’t pursue any renewal). At the time I thought I had some understanding of Chinese history and culture, but it was clear then that things were changing rapidly.

Sprague’s linguistic observation triggered an old curiosity, which resulted in this discussion. I’m not sure there are any conclusions, but it has generated a few interesting questions. I would gather that literacy in Chine is rising rapidly, which would indicate that the conversion from an ideographic to a phonetic language has been effective. Interestingly, the United States, and particularly California, attempted the opposite: the conversion of English from a phonetic language to “look-say” or “whole word” which is to say ideographic, sparking a wave of illiteracy. (In 1950, the number of illiterate conscripts was below 10%, and of those the vast majority had never been to school through 4^th grade; the notion of an adult with an 8^th grade education was absurd).

The US education establishment’s war against phonics was vigorous and has had long term effects. One of those effects has been a complacency about low literacy rates. Actual literacy rates have been hard to establish because of the concept of “reading at grade level”, which is nonsense: with a phonetic language you can either read or you can’t. My wife’s literacy program The Literacy Connection http://www.readingtlc.com/ (note that she didn’t trademark the name, alas, and others are using it now) works: in about 70 lessons of less than an hour each, students learn to read, and by read I mean read essentially any English word including “big words” like Constantinople and Timbuktu as well as polyethylene and dimorphictrinitrotoluene. They won’t necessarily know what the words mean – indeed some ‘words’ won’t have a meaning and thus aren’t ‘real’ words – but they can read them. The effect is that the speaking vocabulary is the reading vocabulary, and the notion of ‘reading at grade level’ is abolished. (Some Google links lead to an older home page touting a Mac version: her program works with all versions of Windows. She still sells it and it still works. Her web site isn’t well maintained.)

‘Reading at grade level’ actually means that a child is learning to read ideographs and has made some progress at it; but that’s disastrous, and is why there are so many illiterates in countries with ideographic languages. In the United States a number of those who ‘read at grade level’ are in fact illiterate. The tenure system in both the schools and the Colleges of Education have tended to conceal this, and thus some Education Departments continue to turn out teachers who simply don’t have any notion of how to teach reading. Worse, some are ‘expert’ who are fundamentally opposed to teaching phonics and to this day insist on ‘whole word’ nonsense. All this is based on the obvious fact that most people who read do not ‘sound out’ words: they see the word and they read it. You and I do it that way. But we didn’t always do it, and if we encounter binitrotoluene and polytrinitrotoluene we can at least pronounce the words and wonder if they are nonsense.

Enough. But illiteracy has been a big problem for China and it is one that they appear to be solving. It has become a large problem for the US, and the trends are ambiguous, with many public schools continuing to have illiterate children reach middle and high school. Most of those drop out, of course. I suspect that Chinese illiteracy will vanish. It is not so clear that American illiteracy will follow the same course.

Any reader who wonders if his child can read should abandon the notion of ‘grade level’ and ask the child to read a normal book aloud. English is about 90% phonetic and the most common exceptions are quickly learned. Though the rough cough plough me through is a good example of a lot of the exceptions.

And I am out of time. Roberta’s program is old, hokey, is essentially a DOS program with DOS level illustrations, but it runs on any machine that runs Windows Explorer, and it has enough self rewards in it that it works. You can find more about it at http://www.readingtlc.com/ . One of the major problems with US schools is that some of them – perhaps many of them – don’t really know how to teach children to read, and many will accept ‘reading at grade level’ for first and second graders. In fact by the end of second grade (and for most by the end of first grade) children should be able to read Transylvania, Salafist, Wahabbi, Wittenberg, resurgence, fundamentalism, and other such words encountered in a typical Wall Street Journal editorial. They probably will not understand what they are reading, but that can produce surprises. One thing is certain, although they can read a word they don’t understand, they won’t understand a word they can’t read.

Many children do learn to read phonetic languages no matter what method is used to teach them, or without any instruction at all. The classic story of that was Macaulay whose father read from the Book of Common Prayer to the assembled family and servants each evening. He laid the book on a table and followed the text with his finger as he read. Five year old Thomas stood on the other side of the table, and soon was able to read, but at first could do so only upside down.

It is better to have systematic instruction with some attention paid to the exceptions. Mrs. Pournelle’s The Literacy Connection does that. Doubtless there are more modern looking programs that do so as well, but we know hers works. http://www.readingtlc.com/

I heard the Endeavor go through the Valley but I was not able to see it from here. It’s now down at LAX. In the old days I’d have been out at Edwards to see it take off. An era has ended. We can hope that it is being renewed.

Windows Update: there is a zero day Internet Explorer attack that has gone wild. Open Windows Explorer, go to Windows Update, tell Windows Update to search for updates, and install the urgent update you will then get.

Do this NOW. The IE vulnerability is apparently loose, and the update released by Microsoft is needed for all computers. Don’t join the Zombie Army. Go do this now.

From our security expert:

Dr. Pournelle: for consideration for the next mail/view:

Important computer security updates should be applied to all computers. There are Internet Explorer updates (all versions), Operating System updates, and application updates (Adobe, Java, and more.

Many of these updates are critical to protecting your computer and data (pictures, files, personal data), so should not be ignored.

My best advice:

1) Set up Windows Update to update automatically. Then check your Windows Update status at least monthly to apply any optional updates. Recommended.

2) Make sure your application programs are kept current. The best (and free) tool for this is Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector. It will check all of your programs and install updates. Available at http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/ . I have used this for over a year, and install it on all of my family computers. Recommended.

3) Make sure your anti-virus program is current. Do a full scan monthly. If your anti-virus program has expired, a good alternative is Microsoft Security Essentials (free). Go to http://microsoft.com/protect (there’s also some good info about computer and family security, including videos). Recommended.

4) Be careful about what you open (email, email attachments, etc). If it is not from somebody you know, or is not expected, then be wary. Even email that purports to be from major companies can be dangerous, like an email from "Amazon" telling you that your order is ready, and click on a link to see the details. If you didn’t order something, be wary. Recommended.

5) Be careful about the sites you visit, and any breathless ‘pop-up’ warnings ("You have a virus!"). Double-check before clicking on links in popups. Recommended.

Regards, Rick Hellewell (Security Dweeb and Web Guy)

View 742 Thursday, September 20, 2012

The story of the terror attack on our Consulate in Benghazi continues. The President continues to refer to the silly video although it is now clear that it had nothing to do with the planned attack other than some fortuitous cover story. The attack employed heavy weapons and was clearly planned long in advance; the date September 11 was of course significant. It is still known why there was essentially no security provided for the Ambassador or why he was sent unprotected to an undefended consulate in an area considered volatile and dangerous. Clearly there was a significant failure of the intelligence community, but whether that was at the information interpretation level is another matter. Intelligence communities did not make the decision to send the Ambassador to an undefended compound. There may be an intelligence fault in protecting the existence and location of the ‘safe’ house where the Ambassador was killed, but the very fact that the consulate was so vulnerable that a ‘safe’ house was needed is probably significant.

It is not clear what the United States policy on the Middle East is, or has been since the President’s Cairo speech.

I am no Middle East expert, but I will continue to defend the general principle that American interests are better protected by expenditures on our Navy and on the development of domestic energy resources, than on military operations in that area. As to the Benghazi operation, had we had a helicopter assault vessel – even an elderly Iwo Jima class such as the Tripoli – in the region the outcome might have been different; and the need for some kind of mobile security intervention force in Benghazi was completely predicable and in fact was predicted.

And the story continues to develop.

I can recommend Holman Jenkins Wall Street Journal article “How 1950’s Eyes Would See the Election” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443816804578004370724409206.html I do not accept his conclusion that entitlement reform is extremely unlikely, but he makes this point:

To cut to the chase, tax reform is the only serious reform we’d hold out hope for today. Entitlement reform, for a lot of reasons, is a political mirage in consensus America. But tax reform can still go a long way to restarting growth, righting the fiscal ship and preparing young people to save for their own old age and health care.

A corollary to consensus theory is an element of chaotic unpredictability in our politics, as parties and leaders, in maneuvering around the center, raid each other’s voters, steal each other’s clothes, pre-empt each other’s winning ideas.

Does that make tax reform more likely under Mr. Romney or Mr. Obama? Literally, it may be impossible to say from current rhetoric and the alignment of political interests.

That leaves only the character of the candidates themselves—Mr. Romney, who delivers transactions, and Mr. Obama, who delivers speeches. Hmm . . .

His conclusion is that the election is important because one of the candidates is more likely to do what he has said he would do than is the other. Reminds me a bit of Newt’s Contract with America.

Yesterday I commented on Thomas Sowell’s essay on tax cuts and the “trickle down” theory so beloved by derivative economists. As Sowell noted, there is no such theory; there is a caricature of a theory, coupled with a deliberate distortion of the reasoning of Treasury Secretary Mellon, that somehow became accepted as an economic theory although no one can find any trace of anyone who actually presented or believed it. Sowell’s essay presents an interesting critique of the “peer review” process that tends to govern modern intellectual life. That was not the ostensible purpose of his economic essay on taxes and revenues, but it may be more important than his original purpose. We find ourselves in a world in which a caricature of a theory is presented in major economics textbooks as if it were real and actually held by someone; it is then criticized as if the refutation of this straw man were a valid intellectual exercise.

This goes on in intellectual disciplines other than economics, and is one of the major threats to the rule of rational thought.

Sowell’s essay may be found at http://www.tsowell.com/images/Hoover%20Proof.pdf Recommended.

View 742 Wednesday, September 19, 2012

A BELATED HAPPY TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY.  Aaarrr! I be slow today me hearties.

http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

My military science fiction stories, particularly the CoDominium series, postulated among other advances of the 21sr Century the routine use of “regeneration stimulation”. I was pretty careful not so be specific with details on how it might work.

Yesterday Roberta noted a report in a local newspaper of what amounts to regeneration stimulation therapy in the real world.

Human Muscle, Regrown on Animal Scaffolding

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/health/research/human-muscle-regenerated-with-animal-help.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

It is still an experimental technique, but then I remember the first heart transplant…

I was rereading L. Sprague de Camp’s Ancient Engineers (1960), and came across

“Although China has sometimes led the world in technology, she has usually lagged in pure science. One reason is that the two leading Chinese schools of philosophy have been anti-scientific.”

He names Confucianism of the 6^th Century BC, and Taoism whose founder Lau-dz was a contemporary of Kung-Fu-dz known better as Confucius. This is doubtless important, and perhaps that realization was one inspiration for Mao’s Great Cultural Revolution: the emperor Qin Shi Huang (Tsin Shi Hwang-di in the older transliteration used by de Camp) caused a general burning of books and the banning of much of what was up to then revered scholarship. Qin Shi also built the Great Wall. All very interesting and I remember thinking of it at the time of the Great Cultural Revolution but alas I didn’t carry that thought far enough. On reflection the similarities ought to have been obvious.

Then de Camp says:

“Another handicap to science in China was the nature of the language. This tongue is very odd indeed. The classical or literary form of the language is made up of comparatively few sounds, and these may be combined in only a limited number of ways. Only 412 syllables are possible.

“Moreover, another rule of the language was: One syllable per word. This meant an absurdly small vocabulary. The use of different tones to distinguish words otherwise identical in sound enlarges the list [of] possible vocables to 1,280, but this is still a ridiculously small number for a civilized tongue.

“As a result, any one syllable may have scores of meanings. To distinguish these meanings, the Chinese use a system of compounding. It is somewhat as if we had only the one word ‘cat’ for all the members of the cat family and had to distinguish the lion, tiger, cheetah, and pussycat as king-cat, stripe-cat, dog-cat, and house-cat. All languages do this to some extent, but none to the degree that Chinese does. In the spoken language such compounds are tending to become permanent, forming polysyllabic words; but this is not so in the literary form. The language is therefore ill-adapted to scientific thought, which needs a large vocabulary capable of absolute distinctions.”

I must have read right past that in my previous readings of The Ancient Engineers, but for some reason this time it took root as a small worm of an idea. How do the modern Chinese get around these linguistic limits?

The Second Edition of the 20-volume  Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of exclamations, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. And these figures don’t take account of entries with senses for different word classes (such as noun and adjective).

http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/how-many-words-are-there-in-the-english-language

When I was in graduate school in psychology one of the things we were expected to know was The Whorfian Hypothesis, which postulated some links between culture and language. It was not particularly popular in the University of Washington psychology department, and we didn’t have to know much about it, although there was a question concerning the Whorfian Hypothesis on the Ph.D. qualifying examination. The primary adherents of the Whorfian Hypothesis were anthropology students, particularly those who followed the American anthropologist Franz Boas and his student Margaret Mead, who was considered to be the most influential anthropologist in the world. I don’t recall anything she wrote about the Great Cultural Revolution in China, and a quick search doesn’t show me anything.

Anyway, I have been wondering how the Chinese have solved the problem of their linguistic limits in developing science and engineering, and idly wondering if Mao’s Cultural Revolution had anything to do with them. Friends more acquainted with Chinese than I am tell me that Sprague is correct regarding classical Chinese. They also note that a great many Chinese have been educated in science and medicine in the United States and thus would be familiar with English.

I’ve even wondered idly if Mao had read Sprague’s book and gave it some thought before he began his 1966 Great Cultural Revolution, but that’s probably silly.

The Chinese have adopted a lot of Western words, and they increasingly use online shorthand symbology.

Also note that classical written Mandarin is on the decline in favor of simplified Chinese <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_chinese>. In fact, the only place you can really go these days to learn reading and writing in classical Mandarin is Taiwan.

Roland Dobbins

I have been reading a recent Hoover Institution essay by Thomas Sowell on “trickle-down” economic theories. Sowell says there is no such theory and there never has been: it is a catch-phrase used by political writers, and a caricature of supply side economics. In a footnote Sowell says

Some years ago, in my syndicated column, I challenged anyone to name any economist, of any school of thought, who had actually advocated a “trickle down” theory. No one quoted any economist, politician or person in any other walk of life who had ever advocated such a theory, even though many readers named someone who claimed that someone else had advocated it, without being able to quote anything actually said by that someone else.

[All quotes are from Thomas Sowell, “Trickle Down Theory and Tax Cuts for the Rich”, Stanford University Press, 2012]

I have to get to work on something else, but I was wondering if anyone who reads here has ever found a genuine reference to a ‘trickle down theory’ other than attacks on what appears to be a non-existent theory advocated by no one but imputed to political opponents?

According to Sowell, the attacks on ‘trickle down’ theory have come whenever cuts on income tax rates have been proposed, beginning with the Mellon tax cuts of the 1920’s, but brought out ever since. The argument for tax rate cuts wase that they would produce increased revenue, thus giving the government more money to spend.

It was an argument that would be made
at various times over the years by others— and repeatedly evaded by
attacks on a “trickle-down” theory found only in the rhetoric of opponents.
What actually followed the cuts in tax rates in the 1920s were rising
output, rising employment to produce that output, rising incomes as a
result and rising tax revenues for the government because of the
rising incomes, even though the tax rates had been lowered. Another
consequence was that people in higher income brackets not only paid a
larger total amount of taxes, but a higher percentage of all taxes, after
what have been called “tax cuts for the rich.” There were somewhat
similar results in later years after high tax rates were cut during the John
F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations.9 After
the 1920s tax cuts, it was not simply that investors’ incomes rose but that
this was now taxable income, since the lower tax rates made it profitable
for investors to get higher returns by investing outside of tax shelters.

As it happens I had some experience with the Reagan tax cuts, and it is easily ascertained that US revenues went up. Some attributed this to economic activities brought on by Mr. Reagan’s defense spending, but I do not believe that was ever well established.

As an aside, I have one disagreement with the way taxes are collected now: I would in fact raise taxes on the poor, in particular on those who pay nothing. I understand you can’t get blood out of a stone, but you can give them the money and tax it away again. The point is that everyone ought to pay some tax if only to raise awareness of how the government gets money. There is no magical government stash. Consider this a cocktail party theory, not something I am willing to defend against all comers with well thought out arguments.

The heart of Sowell’s essay is:

Repeatedly, over the years, the arguments of the proponents and
opponents of tax rate reductions have been arguments about two
fundamentally different things. Proponents of tax rate cuts base their
arguments on anticipated changes in behavior by investors in response
to reduced income tax rates. Opponents of tax cuts attribute to the
proponents a desire to see higher income taxpayers have more after-tax
income, so that their prosperity will somehow “trickle down” to others,
which opponents of tax cuts deny will happen. One side is talking about
behavioral changes that can change the total output of the economy, while
the other side is talking about changing the direction of existing after-tax
income flows among people of differing income levels at existing levels
of output. These have been arguments about very different things, and
the two arguments have largely gone past each other untouched.

I don’t seem to have a pointer to the essay itself. Doubtless someone will provide it.

And we have

Jerry,

http://www.tsowell.com/images/Hoover%20Proof.pdf

I think that’s what you were quoting from

-p

Thanks. I suspect I can find out anything from one or another of my readers.  But then that was true back in BIX days. took a little longer but no less reliable.

http://www.tsowell.com/images/Hoover%20Proof.pdf