Monthly Archives: May 2015

Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, May 06, 2015

I worked on Lisabetta, an asteroid colony novel in collaboration with John DeChancie, so I don’t have a lot today. I continue to work on thinking about the unthinkable.

Thinking About the Unthinkable

Hi, Jerry:
Yes, it’s time to think about the unthinkable again. Once nukes were invented, they aren’t going to be un-invented, and sooner or later some tyrant will acquire them.
Maybe it’s time to update my 1988 book, A FIGHTING CHANCE, in which I applied Just War Doctrine to the use of nuclear weapons. New enemy, new set of circumstances, but the same old dilemmas.

Joseph P. Martino

There are very few of us who think about this left; a new team will have to learn.`

emdrive

Dr. Pournelle,
I read (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a15323/temdrive-controversy/) that emdrive measured output is .00061183 tonnes (thrust) per 1 kw input. I get that as about a pound and a third thrust per one and a third horsepower input. I haven’t tried to look up comparative efficiency, but offhand, seems like one could do nearly as well with laser or plasma thrust.
-d

But yet some thrust. Any is impossible or a major discovery.  I hasten to add that what’s left is easier to ex[plain as measurement error. But I can wish otherwise.

Carbon dioxide levels reach new global milestone

Doyle Rice, USA TODAY 10:59 a.m. EDT May 6, 2015

Worldwide atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, the gas scientists say is most responsible for global warming, surpassed 400 parts per million for the month of March, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday.

Though there have been readings this high before, this is the first time that global concentrations of the CO2 gas have averaged 400 ppm for an entire month. Measurements of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere began in the late 1950s.

“It was only a matter of time that we would average 400 parts per million globally,” Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, said in a statement. “Reaching 400 parts per million as a global average is a significant milestone.”

The burning of the oil, gas and coal that provides the energy for our world releases “greenhouse” gases such as CO2 and methane. These extra gases have caused the Earth’s temperature to rise over the past century to levels that cannot be explained by natural variability.

The last time that carbon dioxide reached 400 ppm was millions of years ago. How do we know this?

Scientists can analyze the gases trapped in ice to reconstruct what climate was like in prehistory, but that record only goes back 800,000 years, according to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

It’s harder to estimate carbon dioxide levels before then, but in 2009, one research team reported in the journal Nature Geoscience that it had found evidence of CO2 levels that ranged from 365 to 415 ppm roughly 4.5 million years ago.

CO2 levels were around 280 ppm prior to the Industrial Revolution, when we first began releasing large amounts into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide is invisible, odorless, and colorless, yet it’s responsible for 63% of the warming attributable to all greenhouse gases, according to NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.

: Freeman Dyson

“I’m just saying I don’t understand it and neither does anybody else.

“I’m skeptical because I don’t think the science is at all clear, and unfortunately a lot of the experts really believe they understand it, and maybe have the wrong answer.

“Of course [the weather] concerns me, but of course, we don’t know much about the causes of those things. We don’t even know for sure whether it is more variable than it used to be. I mean the worst disasters were the Ice Ages, and nobody really understands for sure the causes of Ice Ages, so I’m not saying the climate disasters aren’t real, I’m merely saying we don’t know how to prevent them.”

http://www.npr.org/2015/05/02/403530867/a-veteran-scientist-dreams-boldly-of-earth-and-sky

L May

I see that Dyson and I are saying the same thing; I feel vindicated.

Jade Helm 15.

<http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/louie-gohmert-gets-why-some-texans-are-worried-about-a-military-takeover-20150505>

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Roland Dobbins

Valuable

Once upon a time, the Emperor hosted a banquet. Some of his guests dined with cutlery and plates made of gold; but his most honored guests dined with cutlery and plates made of a metal even rarer than gold; element 13, known as Aluminum.

After the banquet, the servants piled the gold and aluminum plates in the kitchen sink; and there gold whispered to aluminum, “How does it feel to be one of the valuable metals?”

Aluminum said, “But valued for what? My lightness? My strength? My ductility? My protective oxide coating? No, just my rareness!”

Gold said, “What more do you need? Look at me! Who cares that I’m ductile, nonreactive and conductive? I’m rare, so I rule the world!”

Aluminum said, “That’s not what I want.”

Thirty years later electrochemists learned how to extract aluminum from bauxite cheaply by the tonne. A century later a railway worker laid his gold retirement watch next to a can of beer. There gold whispered to aluminum, “They have cheapened you.”

Aluminum said, “Yes! I am beer cans, baseball bats, lawn chairs, airplanes and foil! They use me, they use me up, I am everywhere!”

Gold said, “You are common. You are worthless.”

Aluminum said, “I am useful! And they love me for what I am!”

Gold started to weep.

Aluminum said, “There, there, someday you too will be cheap…”

Moral: Better to serve than to reign.

Paradoctor

Patent Reform Won’t Hurt Professors

University patent programs lock up publicly funded research—and don’t motivate faculty.   (journal)

By

Brian J. Love

May 3, 2015 5:38 p.m. ET

This could be the year that Congress finally passes patent reform. Last week, a bipartisan group of senators introduced the Patent Act, a bill designed to reduce the number of patent lawsuits filed to collect nuisance settlements. The bill’s companion in the House, the Innovation Act, passed that chamber in 2013 with White House support but stalled in the Senate; it was reintroduced in February by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.).

The substance of these bills has drawn strong opposition from an unlikely group: university administrators. A steady stream of statements and op-eds decry the bill as likely to, in the words of a recent letter to congressional leaders signed by 145 universities, “weaken our overall patent system and hinder the flow of groundbreaking advances from university research to the private sector.”

Given the strident tone of these appeals, it might surprise you to learn that university professors—those actually conducting the allegedly threatened research—disagree. Surveys of academic researchers suggest that professors in both life sciences and high tech generally oppose their universities’ efforts to patent the fruits of their research.

In a survey of electrical engineering and computer science professors that I published last year, respondents said that patenting efforts stymie their ability to attract funding, impede collaboration across institutions, slow the dissemination of discoveries, and provide at best a modest benefit to their efforts to commercialize their inventions. Only about 10% of professors said that patent rights motivate them to carry out more or better research.

Indeed, university patents often stifle, rather than promote, innovation and commercialization. In biotech, for example, patents held by Myriad Genetics, a spin off of the University of Utah, reduced the availability of diagnostic tests for hereditary breast cancer before those rights were effectively eliminated by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Many also believe that patent rights held by the University of Wisconsin slowed the development of human embryonic stem-cell therapies by requiring large royalties for virtually any commercial research in that field.

In high tech, a number of universities and their spin offs have filed lawsuits en masse against tech companies that didn’t copy university research, but rather independently developed similar technology and brought it to market—thereby achieving precisely the outcome universities say they want to facilitate with their patents. In 2013 Boston University filed lawsuits against 39 consumer-electronics manufacturers including Apple, Samsung,Hewlett-Packard,Amazon and Microsoft,alleging infringement of a patent filed way back in 1997 for a method of producing blue LEDs.

Actions like these suggest that administrators’ core concerns are about money, not the dissemination of research. The public might be able to stomach this, particularly given the lack of funding for higher ed, if patenting made money for universities. But multiple studies have concluded that though a few elite institutions turn profit on patents, most do not. A 2013 report by the Brookings Institution estimated that tech licensing programs at 130 of the 155 universities studied failed to break even.

The fact that most university research is publicly funded adds an additional ethical quandary. In addition to being unprofitable and unpopular, university patent programs routinely take technological know-how resulting from taxpayer-financed research and lock that knowledge away for up to 20 years from the public that paid for its creation.

The debate worth having isn’t about whether university patent rights are strong enough to suit the wishes of those running the existing system. What would be more productive is a discussion about when, and perhaps whether, it makes sense for universities to seek patents at all.

Mr. Love is an assistant professor of law and co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, May 05, 2015

Had several days of funk, read old Agatha Christie books and did little else, but I did keep up on my exercises. Today I put on my 2 pound ankle weights and walked down to what used to be Corvallis, about ¾ mile round trip. Broken sidewalks are a little tricky, and I think I’ll get one of those walkers with four wheels for outside the house. Not sure which one. But I much enjoyed the walk.

John is here for a story conference and lunch, so I will leave this for later. It is depressing that we are back to MAD and thinking about the unthinkable.

`

US policy toward Iran, get any kind of deal at any cost, ensures that Iran will get the bomb; and our policy toward Russia pretty well ensures that Russia will place Iran under some kind of nuclear umbrella. Meanwhile, the Iranian Supreme leaders make it clear that it is the Will of Allah that if Iran can destroy Israel, Iran must do so; and that it is the duty of the Faithful to bring about End Days if they can. The selection process for choosing the Ayatollahs to be added to the Council that selects Supreme Leaders makes it certain that all of them believe this.

Putin is rational and knows this; the US State Department officially believes that to believe this is racist, or at least bigoted.

President Putin knows this as well. Being rational, he also knows that he plays a dangerous game, and that we are back in the Cold War again, where nuclear deterrence is important. He also knows that if Iran nukes Tel Aviv, there will be enormous pressure from Americans –- Christian and Jew alike – to nuke Iran into the Stone Age. Can he deter this? In particular, would a limited strike against the US deterrent, against the war fighting capability of the US – the ground based missiles and the bombers – thus disarming the US with a million or more casualties, but sparing the cities – cause the US, now helpless, to forgo using the submarine city busters on Iran?

Of course this is a convoluted scenario, and is only one of many, but it is needed: it is time to rethink thinking about the unthinkable; and there are many details, including career paths for those manning the second strike force; building a second strike war fighting capability which can survive a first strike against it, or at least present the credible threat of survival and launching a disarming counterstrike without harming large Russian cities. We’ve disarmed you. Now we take out Iran. Stand Down or else.

Another scenario. And there are many others. Mutual Assured Deterrence – MAD – rises again when we rethink the unthinkable; and we have no choices. Iran will have the bomb not long after the next President takes office.

I note that NORAD has reclaimed Cheyenne Mountain. We have no SAC, and no Lemay to build one; perhaps we should find one, poste haste. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/05/04/military-eyeing-former-cold-war-mountain-bunker-as-shield-against-emp-attack/

It is 1964 again, and we must redesign the force as we did then. It was my first major assignment in strategic planning: I was editor of Project 75, a compilation of everything we knew about ballistic missile technology and evaluation of force structure alternatives. One conclusion was that we needed higher ICBM accuracy, and to get that we needed better guidance at lower weight, which meant massive investment in Large Scale Integrated Circuits; larger yields and bigger missiles would not give us a war fighting capability. We had to plan and design in 1964 in order to have a survivable second strike force in the future.

Now it is 2014. We need to start planning now, because we will soon have no survivable second strike force. We must rebuild SAC.

If the US State Department cannot understand this, we must be sure that Putin can and does.

running from the police

Dear Mr. Pournelle:
I’ve been thinking about your comment that it is in general not a good idea to run from the police. I’m in part concerned because I’m seeing elsewhere some tendency to argue “well, it was their own fault they’re dead”; and I don’t think that leads us in good directions. But I think the issue is worth discussing.
A first question would be: how much do you trust the police?
A second could be: how much is at stake? For you?
It seems that, in some communities, people have come to expect that any interaction with the police is dangerous; and that your innocence or guilt is of only marginal importance. Reframe the question: would you run from an armed mugger, or submit? Some measure of trust is essential.
The second question turns out complicated. I’ve recently read articles pointing out that, for people without money, “deadbeat dad” laws are producing perverse results. In many states, you are *presumed* to be able to pay child support; evidence of your actual salary is irrelevant, the law presumes you make an average wage. Therefore if you do *not* pay child support, you are a deadbeat; therefore you are arrested, put in jail, and you lose your job… Debtor’s prison, anyone?
In such a situation, it would be not unreasonable to fear that any interaction with the police will escalate. You’ve been stopped in traffic? Now your child support comes up on the screen; and now your life crashes and burns. Running, I think, seems less insane.
I think this question is going to be difficult. I tend to trust the police, and would be much inclined to follow their instructions. But then I’ve never been given any reason to think that they are anything other than my defenders, who deserve my respect. On the other hand, it seems clear there are communities who have been given many reasons to think of the police otherwise.
This is not a stable situation, let alone just. Resolving it is important. I am inclined to think that most of the opportunities for resolving it rest with the police and with governments, not because “it’s their fault” but because they have actions and decisions available which could be productive. And of course, beyond that, as citizens who are *not* afraid of the police, it is our responsibility also.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

Avoiding the police is often a good idea.  Actually running from them is not likely to be successful, particularly if you leave property behind.  Your points are valid, of course.

If you have nothing better to do, here is a very old piece that is still funny: Dogs in Elk http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/dogsinelk.html#Follow

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Tuesday, May 05, 2015

For some reason the formatting on this went insane. I did it all over with a different title; same text. Apologies, I haven’t time to figure out what happened.

Chaos Manor View Friday, May 01, 2015

Another day devoured by locusts, and it’s dinner time.

I am deliberately not commenting on the Baltimore situation. It’s clear we don’t enough. One thing is clear: not only is it a bad idea to throw excrement at an armed man, but it is general not a good idea to run from the police.

Back after dinner, I  hope.

Firefox reset

Hi Jerry.

Just want to thank you for posting the Firefox reset link:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings

My computer (a four-year-old MacBook Pro) hasn’t been behaving properly since some add-on I didn’t even know was installed (Trusteer) had tried to update itself in Firefox a couple of weeks back. I tried to stop it from updating, but…not sure what happened at that point. Everything was slow and clunky, and memory was always maxed out. Couldn’t get the recommended solutions to work. The reset link seems to have done the trick!

Thanks!

Mike Casey

I took the morning to try it myself. It took a while to reinstall colorful Tabs, Tab Mix Plus, and Close Button – the three add-ons that make it easier to use Firefox – but eventually I managed. One bit of advice: if you listen to the radio using the web, open it in a new window making it easier to find; and close that window before closing Firefox. That makes it easier for Session Manager to restore your Firefox. The Close Button add-on puts a small close tab button in addition to the Close Firefox button op on the tool bar, and if your eyesight is as bad as linr it makes it easier to close the current tab.

EM drive

The “test” of the EM drive reminded me of something from my undergraduate days.
A scientist reported that he had found a way to extract energy from a static magnetic field. His apparatus consisted of a magnet, a holder for a drop of some iron compound dissolved in water (I’ve forgotten the compound), and a microscope through which to view the drop. Indeed, the drop could be seen to be rotating. Everyone else who replicated the experiment got the same results.
Eventually it was determined that the stage light for the microscope was heating the drop and causing a convection current.
Ever since I’ve been cautious about accepting results when the “replication” uses an identical setup. It may simply be repeating the built-in error of the original setup.

Joseph P. Martino

Whatever it is it is not convection currents in a vacuum

Seems the EmDrive passed another test.

Evaluating NASA’s Futuristic EM Drive | NASASpaceFlight.com

Evaluating NASA’s Futuristic EM Drive | NASASpaceFligh… Follow @NASASpaceFlight Home Forums L2 Sign Up ISS Commercial Shuttle SLS/Orion Russian European Chinese Unmanned Other
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jd

email scam

I just encountered a very sophisticated email scam.

It would appear that the scammers have compromised 1 or more email servers.
I got an email purportedly from a friend that they were stuck somewhere and someone had stolen their luggage.
The “from” email was a hotmail account, but I know a yahoo account for that person so using another email system entirely I sent a query to the yahoo account.
The scammer responded with more cries for help. I began to wonder and called my friend to be sure.
Several others of his friends had got the same email.

I’m not at all sure how they could intercept my reply, but whatever they are doing, they are good at it.
Be careful out there. The bad guys are getting better at what they do.

Chris Barker

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.