Monthly Archives: February 2013

Mail 762 Wednesday, February 13, 2013

overvaluing abstract thought

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

I certainly see your point about intellectuals overvaluing abstract thought; I’ve learned over the course of my life how many things there are that being intelligent and analytical doesn’t help me do. But there are other cases of overvaluing one specific human ability.

When the large publishing firm I used to work for let me go, about a decade ago (in the course of changing from in-house copy editing to outsourcing the function to India), they very generously sent me to training on job searching. One of the things we discussed there was "career anchors," or the different sorts of things that people primarily want from their work. One of the recognized career anchors was Managerial Competence, or the drive to make decisions for an organization, supervise other people, and in general be a high-level administrator. Another was Technical Competence, or the drive to do actual challenging work, about which they noted that Technical Competence people view managing other people as an inconvenient chore that has to be dealt with to get real work done. That resonated with me, as I had systematically avoided becoming a manager in favor of becoming a more highly skilled copy editor. But I noticed that the reward structure of my corporation, and I believe of a lot of corporations, was organized around the reward for successful work being promotion to management. Now, this theory of different work motivations seems not to be an arcane secret—it’s the sort of thing that’s taught in workshops!—so I expect a lot of corporate managers have actually encountered it; and yet this hasn’t changed the corporate culture of becoming a manager being what all the cool kids are doing, perhaps because corporations are, obviously, run by managers who themselves have Managerial Competence as their career anchors.

(You can find a sketch of this at http://changingminds.org/explanations/values/career_anchors.htm , if you’re curious.)

More recently, a friend who still works there told me about one of the firm’s stakeholder meetings at which a local manager expressed the opinion that anyone who wasn’t trying to become a manager, and just wanted to do their work, was an undesirable employee who ought to be eased out in favor of people with more goals. This led to one of the general managers explaining that, to the contrary, those people were an invaluable resource for the corporation, which depended on them to actually maintain its functioning and preserve necessary knowledge. I have to say I think that was a good sign. The idea that management is the only thing that has value, and that a good manager can make gold out of straw, strikes me as a dangerous illusion. And it’s akin, in some ways, to the illusion that abstract reasoning ability is the only thing that has value—not least in that government officials are subject to it (though it may be one that Republicans suffer from more often than Democrats).

(Interestingly, Ayn Rand wrote in her journals that it was an illusion that her heroine, Dagny Taggart, was suffering from. . . .)

William H. Stoddard

In the old dirty blue shirt army in the west after the Civil War, when it was the mission of the army to build roads into the new frontier and protect the early settlers – see James Warner Bellah’s stories of Captain Brittles, and Kirby York, and the days of the one-troop post where a man might be a captain until he retired or died in the saddle – in those days we did not build the Peter Principle into the military. You promoted a man until he was doing the right job and doing it well, and you left him alone to do it. You had to because there wasn’t money to do a lot less. One year the Congress forgot to appropriate money for the army of the west, and the officers and he locals they were protecting scraped by on donations and requisitions and meals paid out of the officers pockets until Congress woke up and took notice,

Lots of military forces have had professional privates: men who would fight, and obey orders, and develop skills, but who wanted no responsibility, not even for choosing their missions. A number of those survived World War II and came to Korea, called up in the desperate need to have an overseas army again after we dismantled it,

A stable work force with companies making steady but not spectacular profits, steady employment – there are fare worse economies than one which provides goods and services, good workmanship at fair prices. Of course they can’t stand competition from bottom feeders.

The United States desperately needs honorable and useful employment at least the top half of the bottom half of the work force. A republic will not survive making a large part of its population voters who make no contribution to the polity other than vote and provide progeny.

‘Is this any way to run a bank — let alone a global financial system?’

<http://baselinescenario.com/2013/02/09/the-importance-of-excel/>

Roland Dobbins

Worth reading but beware optimizing on the wrong variables.

Salting of Carthage

A while back you wondered whether the Romans actually "salted" Carthage after they destroyed the city. My understanding is that this is a myth. First off, salt was a very precious commodity in ancient times and in fact, the Romans actually paid their legionnaires in salt, a practice from which we get our word "salary." So, I doubt very much that they would waste something so precious in salting the ground.

The second thing to remember is that afterwards, the Romans actually established a fairly large resort on the ruins of Carthage, the ruins [of the resort]of which still stand, more or less. Its a popular tourist stop and I have pictures somewhere.

Finally, having recently read Richard Miles book, "Carthage Must be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization" which is a history of Carthage and its conflict with Rome which. Mills describes the Carthage final destruction (razed to the ground, its the survivors sold into slavery), and mentions the Romans cursed the grounds, he makes no direct mention of the ground being sown with salt.

L.J. Brooks

Kingston, Ontario

The Romans ritually sowed salt on the ground of an enemy it wished to humiliate or obliterate. This is well recorded. But it was a ritual. They didn’t use tons,

Photon drive flaw

Jerry,

It might be a flaw in Mote, but it was a slight flaw. Your portrayal of McArthur’s intercept of the Motie lightsail conforms to my calculation of what the Delta Vee of a fusion rocket with a reasonable mass ratio might be. Of course the power density of a fusion rocket that is capable of boosting at 6 gees is nothing short of astonishing.

Those pesky belters with their torch ships cause all types of problems.

Re. the horsemeat burgers issue

As far as I can tell, the issue is not whether one eats horsemeat – or donkey, which is probably extremely similar. That is a cultural issue; Brits eat it much less than other Europeans do. The issue is twofold. First of all, the issue of knowing what you are eating; if one is buying beefburgers it is reasonable to expect that the meat in them is beef and only beef – unless, of course, they have on the packaging in reasonably large type a statement that they may contain small amounts of other meats. The other point is that the horsemeat in question might be contaminated with amounts of a veterinary painkiller, commonly used on horses, large enough to cause harm to humans who eat it.

Further to that, there is also another question. If your suppliers are unscrupulous enough to put bits of a completely different animal into the meat they are selling you, how can you be sure that there aren’t other things in it as well? E. coli, listeria, salmonella, Clostridium botulinum…

Regards,

Ian Campbell

Of course I do not disagree. I have always thought that enforcing a reasonable amount of truth in advertising was all the power the government needed for foods and drugs. I don’t mind if they sell snake biles so long as the jar contains actual biles of actual snakes. I don’t even mind if the government requires to you stamp your snake oil “The US government thinks this stuff is more likely to kill you than do you any good, and you’re crazy to buy it.” I do mind if they jail you for selling it after that warning and it really does contain snake biles.

Enforce a measure of truth about the stuff.

Spengler on the Decline of Islam and the Strategic Import

Jerry,

Spengler has a very interesting article recapping his thoughts in reply to David Ignatius of the WaPo.

David Ignatius, A Demographic Shift in the Muslim World, Washington Post, 2/8/13,

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-a-demographic-shift-in-the-muslim-world/2013/02/08/54ce7bf0-7152-11e2-ac36-3d8d9dcaa2e2_story.html>

Spengler’s money quote:

"But it does not seem likely that the foreign policy establishment, once having noticed the demographic elephant in the parlor, will draw the obvious inference: a society that suddenly stops having children suffers from cultural despair. The same cultural despair that curtains off the future for families afflicts policymakers. Cultural pessimism is a great motivation for strategic adventures. A nation that fears that it may have no future may be willing to risk everything on the roll of a dice. Iran has one last big generation of military age men, the ones who were born in the early 1980s before the great weapons. Nothing but the use of force would stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, with dreadful consequences. With Iran on the verge of building a nuclear bomb, we have hit crunch-time. Will the foreign policy establishment connect the dots in time?"

Spengler (David P. Goldman), Fertility, Faith, and the Decline of Islam: Strategic Implications, PJ Media, 2/11/13,

<http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/02/11/fertility-faith-and-the-decline-of-islam-strategic-implications/?singlepage=true>

I hope Spengler’s concerns do not come to fruition. If they do not, things look like they might straighten out for us in the sense that the jihadist movement may fizzle out during the gentrification of the Muslim population as it continues to play with "cultural weapons of mass destruction."

But as you note we will be playing with them too! <https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?m=20130102>

I suppose I expect way too much in hoping to see the jihadist movement fizzle out in my lifetime. But then I have seen the end of the 70 years war and the Moon landing; pretty darn good for a lifetime. But I had hoped to be on the Moon doing research….

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Eventually the cultural weapons of mass destruction will depopulate Iran, and other youthful Muslim communities, But they have to be employed. And we have to endure while they do their work.

RE: Defense Dept software tracks you thru social media buffy willow

One more reason to avoid social media like a social disease.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/10/software-tracks-social-media-defence

Considering we can’t even write a program to reliably predict DVD tastes from many thousands of input ratings (i.e. Netflix’s recommendations system is bloody awful), I do not have high hope for the accuracy of this. Of course the Gummint, having paid millions for it and its implementation will doubtless use is as 100% rationale for droning your home.

"There is nothing more terrifying than stupidity in action." – Chuck Taylor

Cordially,

John

I generally don’t have social media accounts

I got your job — sort of

Jerry:

I used to follow your columns in Byte back in the day (before way too much day job work and 3 kids 🙂 ). I never dreamed that I would actually end up writing for money. Although it isn’t my day job, it most certainly is my night/weekend job that is helping put my sons through Texas A&M.

I read your article on How to Get My Job since my oldest son has finished the first of several books in the Fantasy genre. I pointed him at your article as well as the Heinlein piece. It was timely since he is actually taking a creative writing class this semester. It will help him calibrate his expectations of the class. You are absolutely correct about needing to know how to write correctly as well as having the talent for the thoughts. My son has his biggest struggle with grammar and spelling. Your advice to write a lot has helped him in that regard.

I was interested in your thoughts to see if any of your advice would have helped me along the way. It would have, but I discovered many of your thoughts independently.

I started down the path of becoming reacquainted with your writing because I adopted your REAL SOON NOW expression many years ago. I used it recently and it reminded me to go to the Web and search for you.

I hope all is well with you these days.

Ray Mack

Apparently I have helped several people get my job. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/myjob.html is still good advice to be read, but it does need revision in the light of the new market structure. Still, the basis advice is sound.

On the EBook Antitrust Settlement

Dr. Pournelle,

Back in April, you mentioned the DOJ antitrust lawsuit against Apple et al. regarding ebook prices at <https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=6814>.

I’ve just read <http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/02/a-message-from-john-sargent>

and thought you’d find it… interesting, I suppose—and disturbing, and in about equal parts. Remind me again what the ‘J’ in “DOJ” is supposed to stand for?

—Joel Salomon

Congress does not understand the new commerce, nor will it for a while. Perhaps a common law will develop.

Subject: Gun Free Zone

How simple is this? This is the ANSWER!!! Amazing.

Why didn’t someone think of this before? It will work. I can see absolutely NO reason that it won’t cut down on gun violence.

JJ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SQcnE5lnPxg#!

REMEMBER-It only works if you have the sign.

Measuring the efficacy of the US educational system

Hello Jerry,

Over the past few days you and several of your correspondents have been discussing the need to ‘measure’ the results of various government programs, with much of the commentary being focused on the educational system. The consensus is that it is hopelessly ineffective.

Not true.

Remember, efficacy is to be measured against objectives.

When I was a mere lad in grade school in the late 40’s/early 50’s, one of the ‘facts’ that I had to learn was that a gentleman named John Dewey was ‘The Father of American Education’. So I learned it.

Dewey was the ‘father’ because he and his supporters were the ones who pushed for mandatory universal public education. And succeeded in getting it implemented to the point that the mere suggestion that it has not been the best of ideas and suffers, if at all, only from a lack of funds ends all discussion. Mandatory public education, run by the state, is sacrosanct. As anyone who has ever questioned the budget of a local school board will quickly learn.

What WASN’T widely publicized in my classes was the reason that Dewey and his crew were so enthusiastic in their drive to make schools schools publicly funded and, more importantly, mandatory. I. e: what are the objectives of public education that our results should be measured against?

The primary objectives, based on writing in the early stages, was to indoctrinate the students with socialism and loyalty to the state and to reinforce the principle that the commands of the state were unquestionable. In other words, using the terms of the current idol of the education establishment, Mao, they were to be ‘re-education centers’. If it were necessary to impart a fact or two to keep the money flowing to socialist causes and maintain control of our children during their formative years, so be it, but ‘educating’ the students, as it is traditionally understood, was NEVER the primary objective.

With the true objective in mind, I think the most steely-eyed and hard-nosed evaluators of the education system could ‘measure’ the results achieved, especially among the ‘best and brightest’ who move on from high school through our institutions of higher learning, and declare that the educational system has been wildly successful. Its product is socialist (Democratic–but I repeat myself) to the point where non-socialists on some college campuses must conceal their true feelings under threat of physical violence. Do you think, for example, that a non-socialist has ANY chance of graduating from a prestigious journalism school in the top half of of his class? More importantly, it has effectively reduced the possibility of re-establishing our former Constitutional Republic to zero. See the results of our recent election after the electorate had the chance to observe the Obamunists in action for four years. The more ‘educated’ the electoral subset, the stronger its support for Obama and his policies.

So yeah, the mandatory public education system has been extremely successful in achieving the objective for which it was established. It can only be viewed as unsuccessful when compared against the Potemkin objective of imparting proficiency in what may loosely be described as ‘The 3R’s’.

Bob Ludwick=

And if you have read all this and have never subscribed, this would be a good time to do it. And if you don’t recall when you last renewed your subscription, it’s about time you did it, no? The pledge drive ends at the end of the week. Subscribe now. Renew Now. Talk a friend into subscribing now.

Mail 762 Tuesday, February 12, 2013

The pledge drive is still on. This place is free to all but it is supported by subscribers.

Neanderthals

Hi Jerry,

In the linked article about recreating Neanderthals, Church, the idea’s exponent, is quoted saying, "You would certainly have to create a cohort, so they would have some sense of identity. They could maybe even create a new neo-Neanderthal culture and become a political force."

What a confused thought. Culture is not hardwired into anybody’s DNA. First-generation Neanderthals will only have the same material for creating culture as the homo sapiens who raise them.

And while it’s fine to speculate about bringing back Neanderthals, the reality of creating breeding stock and controlling them in any way to further the experiment is problematic. Does anyone doubt Neanderthals are people? The experiment would have to be throttled in the name of humanity.

–Mike Glyer

That’s an exceedingly old fashioned conservative view, isn’t it? Surely if it is created in the laboratory it belongs to its creator. Of course there are alternate views of who is the Creator. C.S. Lewis foresaw this kind of thing in “The Abolition of Man,” a book that few read now, alas.

As to how much culture is hardwired, surely that would be the point of the experiment?

And we have one reader’s question:

Every now and then someone comes up with a piece about using DNA and clone technology to re-create the Neanderthal species of humanity.

——————–

Why would we want to when we have Congress?

Teachers unions are worse that you thought

Jerry,

This article:

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/02/pps_employees_snub_medicaid_fu.html

details how the teachers union in Portland Oregon is refusing to complete paperwork that would provide 1.5 Million in Federal Medicare reimbursements unless the teachers get extra pay for filling out the paperwork.

Mike Plaster

And yet would not most teachers be horrified? Pournelle’s Iron Law at work, to the detriment of the profession.

Your dog really does understand you… They’re more likely to

steal food if they think you can’t see, research reveals | Mail Online

Jerry:

I am amazed that anyone would suggest that dogs don’t consider the

risk of being caught. This is why only the bravest or most foolish will allow their dog to roam the kitchen unattended.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2276973/Your-dog-really-does-understand–Theyre-likely-steal-food-think-research-reveals.html#axzz2KhXJNXbe

James Crawford=

You left out most indulgent

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

Guilty as charged.

I allow the Lap Labs to sit in my lap.

James Crawford

“Tether a beast at midnight, and by dawn it will know the length of its tether,” said Cotton Mather.  It’s true enough of dogs. Now that Sable has cancer and we know she will not be with us too much longer, we let her get away with more; and she certainly has noticed that her tether is longer. Our solution is to be extra careful about leaving things out. But just as dogs believe that things that hit the floor are legally theirs, they will consider themselves entitled to anything they get away with a few times and begin acting indignant if  berated for doing what they had always before known better.  Not much different from adolescent children. One can learn a lot from keeping dogs…

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

In your recent correspondence, you stated:

"It is an interesting study on just how much disruption one man can cause. I once had a student who did a term paper on that subject, and it frightened me: I persuaded him not to publish it and arranged for him to go to graduate school at the Center for Strategic Studies. He now works sometimes with my son in the Pentagon."

I do not wish to pry into this research, but I do want to ask two questions:

1) If one man can screw up the lives of so many people, is it also possible for one man to make the lives of other people better? In modern society, do humans have the same potential for good as they do for evil?

2) Without getting to the cases that would get back to the original research, do you have any suggestions for how #1 would be achieved?

I sometimes wonder how much we miss out on, for ourselves and for our fellow man, simply because we don’t know what’s possible.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

But for most of mankind’s cultural history, literature was about how one man made the lives of other people – sometimes those just around him, sometimes many more, once, perhaps, all of mankind. In modern times many have that capability. Next month I will be publishing the California 1914 Sixth Grade Reader, with a few additional stories, one being Doc Mellhorn and the Pearly Gates by Stephen Vincent Benet (who died in March, 1942); much of that book consists of poems and stories about one man who made a difference. Or one woman for that matter. The story of Florence Nightingale comes to mind.

Of course most of our schools no longer have such stories in their Sixth Grade Readers.

One need not be spectacular about making the world a little bit better. Some have many more resources than others, but anyone can do it. If you have a mind to, look up an Anglican hymn “I sing a song of the saints of God.”

21 Century contribution

Ian Macmillan wrote on 2.9.13:

"The problem is that roughly fifty percent of the population has an IQ < 100, and few of these people can make significant contributions to the creative opportunities of the 21st century."

I doubt those with IQs of <100 will invent a new calculus, but having worked with several tradesmen — a plumber, electrician, and carpenter — none of whom were intellectual giants, I can say they all make much more significant contributions to 21 Century society than Urban Studies majors. They were all pleasant, personable, and professional and I found them interesting and engaging.

Had my life taken a different path, I may have become a machinist instead of the editor of a magazine about machining. Those people, and the master tradesmen, are the people who keep the US running.

It has become a folly to suggest we should all be college bound.

I went to a technical high school back in the mid-’60s and about two percent of us were in college prep. The other boys were taking foundry, cabinet making, automotive, electrical, and other "hands-on" careers and could look forward to pretty good jobs upon graduation. The same for the girls who took secretarial, food service, bookkeeping, and "business."

The grads got jobs, got married, had kids, and contributed to society instead of burdening themselves with six-figure student loans to get graduate degrees in Art History and them moving back into their parents’ basements.

Pete Nofel

When I first went to work for Boeing we determined that we would be in our thirties before the average engineer would have cumulatively earned as much as a hard working mechanic, riveter, or other aircraft assembly worker joining up as an apprentice just out of high school would make if we factored in costs of education and the years spent earning nothing and not accumulating pension years as well as earning hourly pay. Now of course the average Boeing worker was probably IQ 95-105 while the college grad engineers would have been at a higher level of intelligence, but you get the idea. Intelligence – the ability to manipulate abstract symbols – is only important for some skills, and one has to be really smart to overcome bad and arrogant attitudes.

Half the population is below average, which hardly means they are useless; it does mean that it makes no sense to try to make them school teachers or civil engineers or lawyers. The arrogance of the intellectuals who assume that all those who aren’t intellectuals are benighted is often astounding.

Breadbasket of the Empire

Hi,

I found Ed’s question interesting, so I had a look. Reliable statistics seem hard to come by, but:

"Annual grain production in Roman Africa [ie Tunisia+Algeria] has been estimated at more than a million tons"

http://books.google.fr/books?id=tW9PM9RxDwAC&lpg=PA25&dq=roman%20africa%20wheat%20production%20tons&pg=PA25#v=onepage&q=roman%20africa%20wheat%20production%20tons&f=false

"Caesar’s expanded province of Africa… was already shipping to the capital 50,000 tons of grain a year. One hundred years later, after the expansion of direct rule, the figure was 500,000 tons…"

http://books.google.fr/books?id=MmXFrafifw0C&pg=PA275&dq=roman+africa+wheat+production+tons&hl=en&sa=X&ei=9PsZUaKnB8Ha0QW_j4GYCA&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q=roman%20africa%20wheat%20production%20tons&f=false

"According to the biography of Septimius Severus, 30 million modii

(200,000 tonnes) were required to feed the population of the city of Rome each year, a substantial proportion of which came from Africa."

http://books.google.fr/books?id=mhNUGgG2eacC&pg=PA536&dq=roman+africa+grain+production+tons&hl=en&sa=X&ei=q_wZUYs20sHSBd6jgYgL&ved=0CEoQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=roman%20africa%20grain%20production%20tons&f=false

According to FAO data, wheat production for Tunisia+Algeria has in recent years varied from 1.6 million tons (2000) to 2 million tons (1995); for 2012, the USDA gives 4.85 million tons. For Tunisia alone, the figures are respectively 530,000 and 840,000.

(http://www.fao.org/ag/AGP/AGPC/doc/field/Wheat/africa/algeria.htm,

http://www.fao.org/ag/AGP/AGPC/doc/field/Wheat/africa/tunisia.htm).

So current production is of about the same order as Roman production, and probably a bit higher. That may not be a fair comparison, in that the Romans didn’t have modern chemical fertilisers or pesticides; but the yield the FAO gives for Algeria, 500-900 kg/ha, equates to about

7-14 bushels per acre, which fits well with the 11 bushels per acre cited as typical for North Africa since 1900 in ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/142655/2/wheat-1938-03-14-06.pdf .

Agriculturally, it appears that North Africa now is comparable to North Africa then.

The population of modern Tunisia+Algeria, however, is about the same as that of the entire Roman Empire under Augustus, so this production does not translate to any sort of surplus – to the contrary, both countries are large importers of wheat, although the FAO notes that "the prospects for expanding the rainfed wheat area are substantial."

Yours sincerely,

Lameen Souag

Thank you. You have found numbers which are far better data than my impressions.

Herman Kahn used to say that famine would end when the average Indian agricultural worker was as productive as the average Italian peasant in the 12^th Century. He was in essence correct. But of course rain has a lot to do with it as well as productivity of workers. As I understand it, the colonial powers had the “goat theory” – that goats ate their way to dirt, dirt made the ground hotter, hot ground makes for hot air, rising hot air prevents rain – and set out to correct it. And then came the Green Revolution. And I can recall a lot of concern about halting desertification when I went to AAAS annual meetings.

Net thrust measurement of propellantless microwave thrusteruut

Jerry:

I haven’t read the paper but I suspect that this "propellant less thrusters" is nothing more mysterious than a photon drive. While it uses no propellant, it does require an energy source. Unless you are using beamed energy such as a laser cannon to boost a light sail, the energy density of the power source is a crucial factor. Because of the extremely high energy density, the potential Specific Impulse of a photon drive powered by direct matter to energy conversion is Cee. However; the ISP of a fusion powered photon drive as you and Niven used in The Mote In Gods Eye is only 1/100 Cee because the energy density of the fuel is lower. In contrast, a fusion powered rocket would have a potential ISP of 1/10 Cee.

I haven’t calculated the energy density and ISP of a battery powered flashlight, but I suspect that you would get more Delta Vee by throwing it.

James Crawford

I am quite certain that you’d get more propulsion from throwing the flashlight. It’s a neat image. I fear you have found a small flaw in Mote…

Helicopter gunship vs. Corvette.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EsoWpTO2qg>

Roland Dobbins

Bill Gates is enamored of Scandinavian Eurosocialism & totally buys into the ‘climate change’ hoax.

See his answers to questions in an ‘Ask Me Anything’ forum on reddit.com:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/c8dh8an>

Roland Dobbins

I’ve used GRC since about 2000; it’s great.   However, these instructions are slightly vague:

<.>

go to the Shields Up page, and do the test he indicates.

</>

Normally, one would do the "all service ports test" — and readers should do this anyway.  But, the vulnerability you’re concerned about is Universal Plug & Play — something Steve Gibson has been warning us about for a long time and he wrote some freeware to address the issue more than a decade ago.  I’m glad he’s on top of this router issue, but I thought it would be important for you to indicate that they hit the large button with UNPNP test.  This was not clear from the post and I thought you might appreciate the feedback.  Thanx for the warning, my router is good.  =) 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Horsemeat found in British supermarkets ‘may be donkey’ –

Jerry

More on The Law of Unintended Consequences:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/horsemeat-found-in-british-supermarkets-may-be-donkey-8489030.html

“A law banning horses from Romanian roads may be responsible for the surge in the fraudulent sale of horsemeat on the European beef market . . .” And some of it may be donkey meat.

Well, we knew that horse meat is better for you than beef, but donkey? Nay!

Ed

I confess I ate what we called critter when I was in graduate school. It was one way to afford meat. But I like horses, and I gave it up as soon as I could afford to. I never tried donkey – at least not knowingly. Obviously were I hungry enough it would be different. America has always been rich enough to afford scruples denied to less fortunate peoples.

‘But at some point the competent and conscientious teachers need to take a hand in the governing of their profession.’

The problem is that since most public school teachers are themselves products of this broken system, there are very few competent and conscientious teachers to be found.

Roland Dobbins

There may be more than you think, although not all the best teachers have teaching credentials.

Implementing "1984"…

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/consumer-security/google-for-spies-draws-ire-from-rights-groups-20130211-2e75y.html#ixzz2KY9r4cJJ

"A multinational security firm has secretly developed software capable of tracking people’s movements and predicting future behaviour by mining data from social networking websites."

Charles Brumbelow

“How does it feel to be the most hated man in America?”

<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/business/john-e-karlin-who-led-the-way-to-all-digit-dialing-dies-at-94.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all>

Roland Dobbins

‘What if today’s high rate of lung cancer among smokers is due in part to the suggestion (planted in every smoker’s mind) that smoking will lead inevitably to lung cancer?’

<http://asserttrue.blogspot.ru/2013/02/lung-cancer-and-power-of-suggestion.html>

Roland Dobbins

I have often suspected that there is a strong “mind over matter” component to this , but there is no way to design an experiment to test the hypothesis. No ethical way, anyway. We know that the combination of smoking and exposure to asbestos is deadly and we know the mechanism. In the case of smoking without other irritants (and in the case of some asbestos exposure without smoking) the numbers get a little more ambiguous. Of course there are plenty of other reasons not to habitually breathe in the smoke of burning leaves. I doubt we evolved to do it.l