Monthly Archives: July 2015

Chaos Manor View, Friday, July 17, 2015

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

“This is known as ‘bad luck’.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

After this great glaciation, a succession of smaller glaciations has followed, each separated by about 100,000 years from its predecessor, according to changes in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit (a fact first discovered by the astronomer Johannes Kepler, 1571-1630). These periods of time when large areas of the Earth are covered by ice sheets are called “ice ages.” The last of the ice ages in human experience (often referred to as the Ice Age) reached its maximum roughly 20,000 years ago, and then gave way to warming. Sea level rose in two major steps, one centered near 14,000 years and the other near 11,500 years. However, between these two periods of rapid melting there was a pause in melting and sea level rise, known as the “Younger Dryas” period. During the Younger Dryas the climate system went back into almost fully glacial conditions, after having offered balmy conditions for more than 1000 years. The reasons for these large swings in climate change are not yet well understood.

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/01_1.shtml

Chaos Manor Reviews returns. http://chaosmanorreviews.com/ There will be regular posts and limited comments. We’re back…

This continues to be my daybook, and will have more general topics; Chaos Manor Reviews will be pretty well to confined to technology, including experiments where I do silly things so that you don’t have to.

It’s 1610 and Time Warner has slowed the Internet for me; it took three attempts to post this, and other things take forever.

Yet another update to be installed on the Surface Pro 3; not sure I understand that but I’ll do it.  Since I never see a build number anymore, I am presuming that this is a release copy.

The installation went smoothly; had to enter user names and passwords for some of the upstairs machines. but they seem to be available just fine. Internet works fine now, so the Time Warner daily lag time is over; given the years when I had to resort to all kinds of tricks including a satellite link to get high speed Internet in this Studio City dead zone, I really shouldn’t complain about a half hour of delays and washouts each day. The rest of the time it just works, without problems.

Preliminary examination shows the Surface Pro 3 is working nicely, Internet connections solid, internal network implemented OK. I’ll start taking it to the breakfast table next week, so I won’t need the big magnifying glass to read the newspapers; I can find what I want in the printed copy and get it on the computer where I can adjust the type size.  It’s still hard to browse the paper on line; I far prefer to do that on the printed copy.  But individual articles are in too small a print for me to read comfortably; and with OneNote it’s easy to make my notes on the articles and get them into the daybook.  I wish I could type, and I wonder how long it will take to train Precious, but she has larger keys.  My problem is that I hit two keys at a time and must correct each sentence, and that takes a while.  Autocorrect can be trained to do much of that, and I’ve got this machine pretty well trained, but of course two key pressed words can be ambiguous. But for unambiguous words auto correct works fine – except that it’s harder to do in Word 365 which is on the Pro.  It’s much easier in Word 7. Maybe one day Microsoft will figure that out.

Checking the MacBook Pro:  splat-k (command-k) revealed most of the machines on the internal net, but failed to see Alien Artifact, which is really my main machine.  I had just turned off the wireless on the MacBook Pro and let it automatically go to Ethernet, which it did just fine; splat-k showed the Pro could see all the other machines except Alien Artifact.  Thought about it a bit and typed in smb://Alien Artifact, which after searching it told me it could not find, and neither did the trouble shooter; tried smb://AlienArtifact and all was well.  As usual, with Macs things are very simple, or impossible; actually you can add tedious to that list, and it helps to have access to a Unix guru.  I would never have believed you could make an operating system understood by the people out of UNIX, but Apple has done so. 

The name Alien Artifact comes from Eric: we built him in an elegant but complex Thermaltake case, which is handsome, big, cool, very quiet, and very easily inspires the name.  I like it, but I suppose I am going to have to come up with a shorter name, except this seems so appropriate.

Now that we have reliable Wi-Fi and Ethernet in the back room  where the TV resides, it’s time to get an X Box.  Microsoft sent me one of the early ones but I seldom used it, and I never did enough with consoles to justify getting another; but they are now doing a lot to make your TV more useful, so I suppose I can investigate.  We’ll see. Recall that this is the day book; full reports in Chaos Manor Reviews.

Intel says that the doubling time in Moore’s Law is now closer to two and a half years than two; this is trivial, of course, unless you are a stock trader. The important thing is that the doubling time for computer power remains an exponential, and if the doubling time changes, so does what is doubled. As shown in our Strategy of Technology showed back in 1970, technology progress generally follows a logistics curve – an ogive or S curve – and eventually will end, whereupon a new S curve generally begins, with slow progress at first; think of the top speed of aircraft as an example. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/07/16/intel-rechisels-the-tablet-on-moores-law/

Global warming and volcanoes

Subject : Global warming and volcanoes
Regarding the connection between volcanoes and temporary climate change; I think it’s worth noting that an eruption large enough to cause major disruption to the climate (even for a year or two, a la Tambora) is likely also to disrupt efforts to ameliorate the bad effects on people, such as famine and disease.
The reason is very simple. Volcanic eruptions and air transport don’t mix very well. The relatively minor eruption in Iceland a few years ago, that massively disrupted air travel across the whole of Europe, is a good example of that. A supervolcano eruption, quite apart from its catastrophic effects on climate, would probably ground virtually all aircraft for years.
Regards,
Ian

A decent systems analysis of what threatens civilization and mankind would have us spending taxes on a far different schedule of preferences, but that’s not how government – at least this kind of government – works.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-next-frontier-for-artificial-intelligence-learning-humans-common-sense/

The next frontier for artificial intelligence? Learning humans’ common sense (ZD)

Spain’s artificial intelligence research institute is looking at teaching robots to know their limits, but think human-level AI is a way away just yet.

By Anna Solana for IT Iberia | July 17, 2015 — 10:56 GMT (03:56 PDT) |

Nearly half a century has passed between the release of the films 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Transcendence (2014), in which a quirky scientist’s consciousness is uploaded into a computer. Despite being 50 years apart, their plots, however, are broadly similar. Science fiction stories continue to imagine the arrival of human-like machines that rebel against their creators and gain the upper hand in battle.

In the field of artificial intelligence (AI) research, over the last 30 years, progress has been similarly slower than expected.

While AI is increasingly part of our everyday lives – in our phones or cars – and computers process large amounts of data, they still lack human-level capacity to make deductions from the information they’re given. People can read different sections of a newspaper and understand them, grasp the consequences and implications of a story. Just by interacting with their environment, humans acquire experience that gives them tacit knowledge. Today’s machines simply don’t have that kind of ability. Yet.

There is considerable more, and it is not a bad summary

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

Chaos Manor View, Friday, July 17, 2015

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

“This is known as ‘bad luck’.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

We are reviving Chaos Manor Reviews. http://chaosmanorreviews.com/ There will be a lot more there as time goes on.

My Surface Pro is installing a major upgrade; I infer that since it is only 22% done, and it has been a while since it started.  I presume it is a new build of Windows 10; I also note that my Windows 7 systems want me to reserve upgrade to 10.  This looks to be a big deal. Hmm. The Surface is restarting.  I’ll see. Ah. After restart it’s 32% done.  A major build all right.  Fortunately the Surface Pro 3 is not a main machine…

OK through trundling, restarting and such.  No build number.  Must be the release.

1952: OK it’s the release candidate.  I’ll explore it over the weekend and something to say about it in Chaos Manor Reviews.

Had good story conference with SKYPING Wednesday. My 2008 Mac Book Pro died (power failed) quite suddenly after two hours plus, so I thought I would replace it. Just checked, and yes, there is a replaceable battery as well as a replaceable hard disk back there; I wondered because there was no way to replace the Air’s battery. With the Pro – this Pro at least – it’s push pull click click; I just checked. Now I have to figure out what year it is – there are apparently several different sizes depending on year, and I don’t remember exactly when I got the Pro; around 2008, and that was the year of my brain cancer, and my memories are a bit fuzzy. I’ll find out. The price seems to be between $50 and $100.

Performance on a new Pro would be better I suppose but for what I do with that Mac would not be particularly noticed. 

Ah, About This Mac says it’s a late 2008 15” running Yosemite. On line price seems to be about $100, although I still haven’t found what Apple sells them for; my Mac experts tell me stick with Apple. No hurry in any event. Alas I suppose I’ll have to replace the Air with its swollen battery, but the latest Surface Windows 10 Build is encouraging, and a tablet with OneNote is better than an Air for the kind of research I do away from my desk. Since there are obviously several hours of battery life in this 7 year old MacBook Pro which I don’t use as a portable anyway, I suspect I get a mains outlet on an extension cord for living room SKYPING and otherwise do nothing…

The Heritage Foundation on the Iran “Deal” (a kind of agreement with a foreign power unknown until recently) had this to say:

 The deal the Obama administration reached with Iran is one of the worst in history, according to Heritage Foundation defense expert Jim Carafano:

Proponents of the Deal say it stops Iran from having the bomb anytime soon, but I see nothing in it that would make that impossible or even very difficult except Iranian intentions; apparently Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry believe they have persuaded Iran not to go for a bomb, at least not on their watch. That would be powerful diplomacy.

Inspection requires notice, and no American Inspectors are allowed at all.

US inspectors will be banned from all Iranian nuclear sites under controversial deal amid warnings ‘only American experts can tell if they are cheating’

• Only countries with ‘diplomatic relations’ to Iran make up inspection teams
• As the U.S. does not, no American nuclear experts will be taking part
• NSA Susan Rice also confirmed no independent U.S. inspections in Iran
• Nuclear deal with UN requires Iran to dismantle key elements of program
• Inspectors will have access to nuclear facilities, but must request visits

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3165063/US-inspectors-banned-Iranian-nuclear-sites-controversial-deal-amid-warnings-American-experts-tell-cheating.html

Some say it’s a brilliant act of diplomacy by diplomatic masters.

Putin’s Brilliant Diplomacy to Bring West, Iran to Negotiations Table

Le Huffington Post columnist Didier Chaudet analyzed Russia’s decision to sell Iran the S-300 missile defense system. The deal is not about mere economics, but a series of complex, chess-like moves successfully implemented by the Russian government to bring the West and Iran to the negotiation table.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20150505/1021747686.html#ixzz3gBojssZU

Why I’ll vote in favor of the Iran nuclear deal

07/14/15 01:23 PM

By Rep. Donald Beyer

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/why-ill-vote-favor-the-iran-nuclear-deal

The historic accord to close off Iran’s pathways to a nuclear bomb is an enormous win for U.S. national security and President Obama. In the coming weeks, I plan to vote in support of this landmark achievement and urge my colleagues to do the same.

I witnessed firsthand the transformative power of diplomacy as ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein. I commend our diplomats for skillfully averting a global showdown with Iran as part of a deal that blocks its efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon.  <snip>

Congress can vote to reject this “deal” but Obama has vowed to veto any such rejection. I presume that somewhere in the Pentagon there is a group studying a world with a nuclear Iran. this process of Presidential agreements without advice and consent of the Senate, with the President able to veto Congressional disapproval is a recent Constitutional discovery, unknown through most of the history of the Republic.

Maunder Minimum Subject 
Hi Jerry,
With the constant hyperbole surrounding climate discussions, it’s hard for a non-scientist to get a solid sense of a writer’s objectivity. For instance, Ars Technica’s science writer says the maunder minimum is not an important factor on climate even if true.
I like reading Ars, but I’ve noticed its science writer is often (always?) at odds with your views. I’ve read everything you wrote here for over a decade so I value your opinion quite a bit, but I’d also like to read the opposite view. My problem is finding a source I trust. Do you have any advice on how a non-scientist can see through these issues without getting misinformed too much?
Thank you!

Francis Gingras

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/the-maunder-minimum-is-back-maybe-and-we-probably-wont-notice/

The arstechnica piece says that the Little Ice Age was caused by volcanoes, not solar variation. This was, interestingly, a theory first published by Benjamin Franklin after he witnessed volcanic dust from Iceland extended a long way; he was sailing to England. And we know that 1816, the Year Without a Summer, was almost certainly caused by the Tambora eruption, which injected reflective particles into the atmosphere and thus changed the Earth’s albedo. More solar radiation was reflected and thus did not reach the Earth.

The models of solar activity predict a new minimum in solar activity. The models have been validated against observation back to as long as we have observation. They are pretty accurate. Whether decreased solar activity has much relationship to solar output – and thus to irradiation received by Earth – is not so clear. We do know that the variance in solar radiation is tiny compared to the output of the sun – but that tiny variance exceeds all the other sources of thermal addition to the Earth’s eco-system, including warming from the interior (due to radioactive element decay in the core). Tiny – relative to solar output – variations in solar output have a large effect on climate. Whether sunspots indicate increased total solar input to the Earth is not so well understood, since we do not have sunspot records for more than a few hundred years, and we do not have accurate records of Earth temperature for more than a century (defining accurate to a degree C or less).

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SORCE/sorce_03.php

Daily variation in solar output is due to the passage of sunspots across the face of the Sun as the Sun rotates on its axis about once a month. These daily changes can be even larger than the variation during the 11-year solar cycle. However, such short-term variation has little effect on climate. The graph above shows total solar irradiance on a daily basis. The plot is based on data collected by the ACRIM III instrument, which is currently in orbit. (Graph by Robert Simmon, based on data from ACRIM III)

Variations in TSI are due to a balance between decreases caused by sunspots and increases caused by bright areas called faculae which surround sunspots. Sunspots are dark blotches on the Sun in which magnetic forces are very strong, and these forces block the hot solar plasma, and as a result sunspots are cooler and darker than their surroundings. Faculae, which appear as bright blotches on the surface of the Sun, put out more radiation than normal and increase the solar irradiance. They too are the result of magnetic storms, and their numbers increase and decrease in concert with sunspots. On the whole, the effects of the faculae tend to beat out those of the sunspots. So that, although solar energy reaching the Earth decreases when the portion of the Sun’s surface that faces the Earth happens to be rife with spots and faculae, the total energy averaged over a full 30-day solar rotation actually increases. Therefore the TSI is larger during the portion of the 11 year cycle when there are more sunspots, even though the individual spots themselves cause a decrease in TSI when facing Earth.

<snip>

Another trend scientists have picked up on appears to span several centuries. Late 17th century astronomers observed that no sunspots existed on the Sun’s surface during the time period from 1650 to 1715 AD. This lack of solar activity, which some scientists attribute to a low point in a multiple-century-long cycle, may have been partly responsible for the Little Ice Age in Europe. During this period, winters in Europe were much longer and colder than they are today. Modern scientists believe that since this minimum in solar energy output, there has been a slow increase in the overall sunspots and solar energy throughout each subsequent 11-year cycle.

The number of sunspots on the Sun’s surface is roughly proportional to total solar irradiance. Historical sunspot records give scientists an idea of the amount of energy emitted by the Sun in the past. The above graph shows sunspot data from 1650 to the present. The Maunder Minimum occured from 1650–1700 and may have influenced Europe’s little ice age. (The data from this period are not as reliable as the data beginning in 1700, but it is clear that sunspot numbers were higher both before and after the Maunder Minimum.) Since then, sunspot number have risen and fallen in a regular 11-year cycle. An 11-year running average shows only the long-term variation, which shows a rise in total sunspot numbers from 1700 until today. [Graph by Robert Simmon, based on data compiled by John Eddy (1650-1700) and the Solar Influences Data analysis Cent

Lastly, on the time scale of the lifetime of the solar system, measured in billions of years, the Sun is going through the same life and death cycle as any average star. As it uses up its hydrogen fuel, the Sun grows hotter and hotter throughout its lifetime. In a couple of billion years, this gradual heating will melt all the ice on Earth and turn the planet and into a hothouse much like Venus. Since the increase occurs over such an extended period of time, today’s instruments cannot even detect year-to-year changes along this cycle. By the time the effects of this warming trend are felt, it’s possible humans may have become extinct, or found a way to populate distant planets, and in either case may not still be left on Earth worrying about Earth’s demise.

next: The Sun and Global Warming
back: Earth’s Energy Balance

None of this is easy reading, but my conclusion is that there is considerable uncertainty, but it is a reasonable conclusion that models of solar activity are useful in predicting solar output and therefore total solar heat input to Earth. Whether these variations in solar output are are more responsible than CO2  (1825 to present) for global warming is worth study, but need to find more data. It does seem reasonable to to be skeptical about the certainty of human caused global warming, since we know that Earth in Viking times was at least as warm as it is today and very likely was warmer in Roman times.

As Freeman Dyson continues to point out, CO2 is going to have its greatest effect in cold, dry areas, because the “greenhouse” effects of CO2 are small compared to those of water vapor. As soon as there is appreciable water vapor, heat reflected from earth and radiated to space but intercepted by greenhouse gasses has been got: there isn’t more for the CO2 to intercept.

We can possibly predict a coming period of minimal solar surface activity – sunspots, etc. Whether this will cause cooling is not known, but it appears to be possible. There is definitely a correlation between sunspots and solar irradiance. Whether this predictable decrease in irradiance is greater that the effects of CO2 is apparently in dispute among those more expert than me. I can only work with the data available, but include in that data records of growing seasons and other rough climate indications from Britain to China, and I’m quite certain it was warmer in Viking times than now, despite Mann’s hockey stick that purported to erase the Viking Warm period.

One thing is certain: USA efforts to decrease the use of coal will have very little effect of world production of CO2, as undeveloped countries continue to become developing nations, and China continues to build coal plants . As witness:

https://twitter.com/settostun/status/555479447248568320/photo/1

We also have this:

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/mini-ice-age-not-reason-ignore-global-warming

There Probably Won’t Be A “Mini Ice Age” In 15 Years

July 14, 2015 | by Caroline Reid

Since our article yesterday about how reduced solar activity could lead to the next little ice age, IFLScience has spoken to the researcher who started the furor: Valentina Zharkova. She announced the findings from her team’s research on solar activity last week at the Royal Astronomical Society. She noted that her team didn’t realize how much of an impact their research would have on the media, and that it was journalists (including ourselves) who picked up on the possible impact on the climate. However, Zharkova says that this is not a reason to dismiss this research or the predictions about the environment.

“We didn’t mention anything about the weather change, but I would have to agree that possibly you can expect it,” she informed IFLScience.

The future predicted activity of the Sun has been likened to the Maunder Minimum. This was a period when the Sun entered an especially inactive period, producing fewer sunspots than usual. This minimum happened at the same time that conditions in Northern America and Europe went unusually icy and cold, a period of time known as the “little ice age.”

The thrust of this is that it’s not going to be as serious as all that; but then the notion of a new ice age hasn’t been put forward since the 1970’s when the same people who now warn us of disastrous global warming were talking “Genesis Strategy” and warning of extreme cooling, and AAAS sessions were devoted to the cooling trend.

There are other things to worry about.

Jim and I have been discussing the link below. It is something he and I have been following for awhile now, and the information in here is horrific. I knew it would be bad, but I had not realized how far inland the devastation would reach, and they are not prepared.

They do have a technical error in the article. Plates that are subducted do not “heat up and melt the material above them.” They are themselves melted, and since the melt is less dense, it rises upward, through whatever fissures in the rock it can find. It is the Juan de Fuca plate itself that fuels the Cascade range of volcanoes. More, since not all minerals melt at the same temperatures, it is responsible for the range of melt chemistries from near the shoreline to deeper into the continent. This, in turn, results in the range of styles of eruptions, from relatively runny, thin lava which releases trapped gases in lovely fountains, to thick, viscous lava that causes explosive eruptions a la Mt. Mazama (its caldera is Crater Lake; it lost ~1/3 of its height in 2290BC, and the local Native Americans passed on the eyewitness tales of the eruption in their legends) and Mt. St. Helens.

I’ve been to Mazama and St. Helens, as well as numerous other Cascade volcanoes, and I’ve been along the coast of Oregon, taking several segments of the coastal highway, as well as I-5 from my friends’ place in the Willamette Valley down to Mazama, and on another trip, down to Redding CA. I’ve been in Portland and Seattle, as well as Eugene, Corvallis, and Salem. Since I already knew of the Cascadia SZ, all of the various “Entering Tsunami Hazard Zone/Leaving Tsunami Hazard Zone” signs were a bit unnerving.

The fact that there is a fault in SoCal that is venting He3 at an accelerated rate is also intriguing, and not in the good way; it turns out that that particular fault is ALSO a subduction fault. It lies well west of the San Andreas.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

http://www.amazon.com/There-Will-War-Volume-III-ebook/dp/B01110QOVQ 

Now available.

Is There a Bubble? Top Tech Investors Weigh In

Some of the best-known technology investors, including John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, Egon Durban of Silver Lake Partners, Henry Kravis of KKR, and Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners, appeared at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference over the past few days, talking about their investments and whether we are in another “bubble” similar to what happened in technology in 1999 and 2000.

Most agreed that things are different now, but that private market valuations are high, as evidenced by the number of “unicorns”—private companies that have raised money with a valuation of greater than $1 billion.

http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/none/336057-is-there-a-bubble-top-tech-investors-weigh-in

Here’s how much a self-driving car could save you on car insurance

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/07/17/heres-how-much-a-self-driving-car-could-save-you-on-car-insurance/

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

Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Story conference including Skype with Dr. Jack Cohen in England,followed by a long lunch. Very hot today, and even after a nap I find myself exhausted. This will be brief.

There are two major breaking stories, and we don’t know enough about either to make intelligent comments.

Regarding the constitutional status of the Iran “deal” (a term unknown to the Constitution) I have found no better analysis than this:

Constitutional Issues in the Iran Deal

http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2015/07/15/constitutional-issues-in-the-iran-deal/

Is the deal announced yesterday with Iran unconstitutional?

In a word: probably.

Here is my assessment.  To begin, the Constitution’s text provides the way to make major international agreements – through supermajority approval in the Senate, as set forth in Article II, Section 2: “The President … shall have power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”  This is, moreover, the way the framers and ratifiers understood it: every discussion of international agreement-making in the founding era assumed it would take place through the Senate as Article II, Section 2 describes.  Some argued that this was not enough protection against harmful treaties, and wanted a higher bar – three-quarters of the Senators present, or two-thirds of all Senators, not just of those present.  No one contemplated that treaties could be made in an alternate, less demanding way.

But note that the conclusion is “probably”; not “quite probably” or “certainly”. I do not have time – given my slow typing – to do an essay on this.

I urge you to read the entire thoughtful analysis. The President has always had special powers with regard to foreign policy; this is at the very edge of them. It is not an automatic decision, even for original intent constitutionalists.

As for policy, here is the Tory position:

Israel and Saudi Arabia present united front over Iran deal

Iran’s enemies unsettled by its deal with the West, but Bashar al-Assad of Syria says it is ‘a great victory’

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/11739349/Israel-and-Saudi-Arabia-present-united-front-over-Iran-deal.html

By Richard Spencer, Middle East Editor and Robert Tait, Jerusalem

8:53PM BST 14 Jul 2015

The nuclear deal with Iran caused fury in Israel and consternation around the region at the likely increase in influence and resources of a newly enriched Iran.

Most telling was the loudest expression of support. “I am happy that the Islamic Republic of Iran has achieved a great victory by reaching an agreement,” President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said in a message to his Iranian opposite number, Hassan Rouhani.

“In the name of the Syrian people, I congratulate you and the people of Iran on this historic achievement.”

I present it without comment. We simply do not know enough. No one wants a war, nuclear or conventional, in the Middle East; and no one can guarantee that removing Iran’s capability to make nuclear weapons will not require a nuclear strike. That hasn’t always been true, but I think it’s true now. The question is, “if not a deal now, what should we do?’

We simply do not know enough about Planned Parenthood and its use of body parts of late period aborted infants. We probably will not even if Congress investigates http://www.lifenews.com/2015/07/15/congress-will-investigate-planned-parenthood-for-selling-body-parts-of-aborted-babies/ but we certainly do not now; I will comment when I know enough to be able to say something meaningful.

TurboTax Drops Cloud Backup Option for Desktop Users      (nyt)

By ANN CARRNSJULY 14, 2015

If you used the desktop version of TurboTax during the most recent tax filing season and backed up your return online, you may want to make sure you have a copy of it stored on your computer.

Intuit, the maker of TurboTax tax preparation software, has notified some desktop customers that it is discontinuing a service that allowed them to store a copy of their return on TurboTax’s cloud system. (Desktop customers install the tax software on their own computer, by buying a CD-ROM or a download, rather than preparing their returns on the TurboTax website.)

Users have until July 21 to gain access to their tax returns on the cloud and resave them on their own computer if they need to do so.

In the F-35/F-16 comparison, this was an interesting comment:
“Hi. I have experience engineering controls for these types of systems and I would like to point out that the media has been doing an _incredibly_ poor job interpreting the leaked report.
“The report in question described the results of a very specific test of the F-35 control laws. The result of test indicated that in a particular part of the flight envelope the plane responded sluggishly to pitch inputs from the pilot. This would make it harder for the pilot to exploit the F-35 airframe’s great high-AOA capability because it means that the airplane will take longer than it needs transitioning to the requested AOA and therefore bleed more energy.
“The report also noted that the aircraft itself has sufficient control surfaces to allow for much higher pitch & yaw rates. The test-pilot recommended relaxing the control laws to allow for faster pitch rates in the part of the flight envelope where the test occurred which would give a pilot more ability to exploit the aircraft’s AOA capabilities.
“The test did _NOT_ indicate that the F-16 was a better dogfighter. The F-16 was simply used as a visual reference for the F-35 test pilot to maneuver against.
“Anyone who wants to understand what REALLY happened should read the actual report:
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/read-f … 9a4e66f3eb
“David Axe has a history of blatantly misrepresenting findings and totally misunderstanding how modern wars are prosecuted. Its a shame other journalists are repeating his silliness without much critical analysis.
“edit: Every fighter is developed and tested this way: Start with conservative control laws then relax them as needed according to tests. Same thing happened with the F-16, F-15, and F-14 during development. We just didn’t have the internet then so uninformed dilettantes couldn’t broadcast their opinion. “
I’d further note that the F-35 performance limitations largely result in compromises to the aircraft to accommodate the Marine’s STOVL version–16% of the total buy–so they can deploy/employ from assault ships (a capability that has been needed…nowhere…ever), as well as the cancellation of the higher-thrust engine for which development was nearly complete. I have serious concerns about the F-35 program, but the referenced article provides no real insight or useful analysis.

I should have made it more clear: I am no expert on particulars in the current dispute.  I do assert the general principal: there is no prize for second place in an air superiority contest.  But read The Strategy of Technology for more.  I have not spent much time at particulars.

When it is asserted that a particular airplane would be good at both air supremacy and ground support, I assert that this is highly unlikely.  Air supremacy is not cheap; but if you have it, ground support from the air can be a lot cheaper and more effective.

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

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Bastille Day

On July 14, 1789, the Paris mob aided by units of the National Guard stormed the Bastille Fortress which stood in what had been the Royal area of France before the Louvre and Tuilleries took over that function. The Bastille was a bit like the Tower of London, a fortress prison under direct control of the Monarchy. It was used to house unusual prisoners, all aristocrats, in rather comfortable durance. The garrison consisted of soldiers invalided out of service and some older soldiers who didn’t want to retire; it was considered an honor to be posted there, and the garrison took turns acting as valets to the aristocratic prisoners kept there by Royal order (not convicted by any court).
On July 14, 1789, the prisoner population consisted of four forgers, three madmen, and another. The forgers were aristocrats and were locked away in the Bastille rather than be sentenced by the regular courts. The madmen were kept in the Bastille in preference to the asylums: they were unmanageable at home, and needed to be locked away. The servants/warders were bribed to treat them well. The Bastille was stormed; the garrison was slaughtered to a man, some being stamped to death; their heads were displayed on pikes; and the prisoners were freed. The forgers vanished into the general population. The madmen were sent to the general madhouse. The last person freed was a young man who had challenged the best swordsman in Paris to a duel, and who had been locked up at his father’s insistence lest he be killed. This worthy joined the mob and took on the name of Citizen Egalite. He was active in revolutionary politics until Robespierre had him beheaded in The Terror.

The garrison of the Bastille consisted mostly of aging soldiers posted to soft duty as a form of honorable retirement. They were slaughtered to a man.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view318.html

There is no way to be certain, but it is probable that the entire Earth–almost certainly the Northern Hemisphere– was warmer in the 11^th Century than today. There is more data but it has not been made available to the general scientific community. The latest solar activity predictions indicate that the next few solar cycles will be quieter. We do not have records for more than 170 years, but the last time we had a prolonged period of minimal solar activity included the so-called Maunder Minimum, and fell in the middle of what is now called The Little Ice Age.

We know the Earth was warmer during the Viking Period, possibly – I think probably – than it is now.  In 1325 there was a noticeable change in weather patterns in Northern Europe, and by the 1700’s the Thames froze over. In 1776 the Hudson froze hard enough for Col. Alexander Hamilton to bring the guns captured by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys from the British fortress at Ticonderoga across the Hudson ice to General George Washington in Harlem Heights, thus covering Washington’s retreat from the encircling British General Howe. It was a decisive event of the Revolutionary War. During the 18^th and 19^th Centuries there was a period of unified warming (interrupted by The Year Without a Summer q.v.). Note that the interruption of solar radiation caused by Tambora had a decided and recorded effect on annual temperature; it was neither predicted nor predictable, and climate models do not accommodate it – although periodic variations in solar output can have effects on the solar radiation Earth receives.

<snip> Greg Kopp of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, pointed out that while the variations in luminosity over the 11-year solar cycle amount to only a tenth of a percent of the sun’s total output, such a small fraction is still important.  “Even typical short term variations of 0.1% in incident irradiance exceed all other energy sources (such as natural radioactivity in Earth’s core) combined,” he says.

Of particular importance is the sun’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation, which peaks during the years around solar maximum.  Within the relatively narrow band of EUV wavelengths, the sun’s output varies not by a minuscule 0.1%, but by whopping factors of 10 or more.  This can strongly affect the chemistry and thermal structure of the upper atmosphere.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/ has much more of interest.

Climate Scientists Road to Hell

https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/climate-scientists-road-to-hell/

particularly the first cartoon.

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

PhD Comics: Dante’s Inferno, Academic Edition

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1813

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

It is almost certain that the “deal” with Iran makes it certain that Iran will have one or more nuclear weapons within a year of Obama leaving office. He will be able to say it didn’t happen on his watch.

Good afternoon, Dr. Pournelle,
Regarding the treaty with Iran, I’ve added a few links from The American Conservative for a different perspective:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/iran-past-the-paranoia/
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/obamas-legacy-will-be-with-iran/
I don’t like the current US president, but in this case I think he is making the correct choice. And the question still remains: so what if Iran gets nuclear weapons? Israel has a lot more of them, and frankly I’m more concerned about the leaders pursuing the so-called “Samson Option” in a moment of paranoia.
Regards,
Don Parker

It may well be that we have no choices now, and may not have had any for two years. Israel is unwilling to begin all-out war with Iran by striking their nuclear facilities; Iraq, their historic enemy, is weakened, and much of Iraq is now under control of Iran and Iranian Shiite allies including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

https://altairastrology.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/algol-and-pluto-two-astrological-hobgoblins/ 

Skimming through old journals I found http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view370.html which is the View for the week including July 14 back in 1985. It’s mostly stuff from the past, but it does have my views of the Wilson/Plame affair, which most have forgotten. If you have any interest you will find them there.

Matter to be considered:

8614ACommercial Space Accident Report—

In-Flight Breakup During Test Flight, Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo, N339SS,

Near Koehn Dry Lake, California, October 31, 2014.

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/07/14/2015-17377/sunshine-act-meeting?utm_campaign=subscription+mailing+list&utm_medium=email&utm_source=federalregister.gov

: The BATTLESHIP—

Interesting facts …
Not only is the picture awesome but so are the statistics!
During the 3-1/2 years of World War 2 that started with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and ended with the Surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945, “We the People of the U.S.A.”  produced the following:
22 aircraft carriers,
8 battleships,
48 cruisers,
349 destroyers,
420 destroyer escorts,
203 submarines,
34 million tons of merchant ships,
100,000 fighter aircraft,
98,000 bombers,
24,000 transport aircraft,
58,000 training aircraft,
93,000 tanks,
257,000 artillery pieces,
105,000 mortars,
3,000,000 machine guns, and
2,500,000 military trucks.
We put 16.1 million men in uniform in the various armed services, invaded Africa, invaded Sicily and Italy, won the battle for the Atlantic, planned and executed D-Day, marched across the Pacific and Europe, developed the atomic bomb, and ultimately conquered Japan and Germany.
It’s worth noting, that during the almost exact amount of time, the Obama Administration couldn’t even build a web site that worked.

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” – Voltaire

You didn’t see this on the “News at Five”

But, from the UK: 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3003142/Boys-15-charged-killing-dog-walker-botched-robbery.html

More evidence that the media is tainted.  Freedom (bs) of the press.
A man out for a walk with his dog last week was gunned down by two black teens. And when police found the man’s body, they made a heartbreaking find right next to it.   
As NBC Philadelphia reported, the three black teens got “bored” playing basketball and decided to go rob someone. After seeing one man with a large dog, and deciding not to rob him, they then saw 51-year-old James Patrick Stuhlman walking his terrier.
Stuhlman typically walked his dog with his 13-year-old daughter. But on the night of his murder, March 12, he had told her to stay home because it was getting dark out, which very likely saved her life.
As he walked down the street, Stuhlman, who owned a local landscaping company, saw three teens approach him.. Then they grabbed and robbed him, and shot him once in the leg. They could have just taken his money and ran at that point. But they did not.
“At one point, he did plead for his life, ” Captain James Clark said Thursday at a news conference, according to the New York Daily News. “He said, ‘Please don’t shoot me, please don’t shoot me,’ and they still shot him one more time.”
That second shot took his life.
So “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” really did happen   – not in Ferguson – but in a Black-on-White capital murder in Philadelphia.
So can we expect Barack Obama and Eric Holder to demand a civil right investigation? Don’t bet on it.
Police have arrested 15-year-old Brandon Smith.. They also arrested a 14-year-old whose name has been withheld – because he is supposedly a “child.”.
They said they decided to rob Stuhlman because his dog was smaller than their intended first target. The shooter who gunned down this father in cold blood, 15-year old Tyfine Hamilton, is “still at large”. Philadelphia police consider him “armed and dangerous.”
Smith has been charged in relation to the murder and is still in custody. But the unnamed teen was inexplicably just charged with robbery despite being an accessory to murder. Police are offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Hamilton.
  < u>
Typically, the teens have all been in trouble with the law in the past. It is stunning at what early age vicious murderers are now made. 15? Unbelievable.
Capt. Clark warned Hamilt on at a press conference: “Get with your parent and turn yourself in before we come and get you…We know where you are.”
Philadelphia Police Lt. John Walker said that when police arrived at the scene Stuhlman was laying in a pool of blood and was already unresponsive. The family man still had his flashlight in his hand.
But what police found next to him was heartbreaking. His dog was pawing him, sniffing at his face, and whimpering. “The dog was lying next to him – appeared to be scared and in shock,” Walker said.
“His daughter goes for a walk with him almost every night,” Clark said. “For whatever reason, he said to her, ‘it’s a little late tonight I don’t want you walking with me.’ So in effect, he may have saved his daughter’s life.”
Thank God he did, but that is small consolation for the young girl who is now without a father, and will forever fear walking at dusk, thanks to the savage brutality these young monsters inflicted on her own dad.
Author’s personal note: I don’t usually do this, but feel I must. The media is censoring this story. You know why. They made the Michael Brown fraud front page news for months. But they will bury this REAL “Hands up, Don’t Shoot” horror. It is up to you to share this article with everyone you know. We can bypass the media censorship and get the truth out there. Thank you.

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” – Voltaire

F-16 kicks F-35’s tail?
Dr. Pournelle,
I’ve overfilled my quota for contacts to you today, but thought that you might not have seen this : http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/07/disastrous-f-35-vs-f-16-face-off-was-also-a-battle-of-philosophies/
Reminds me a bit of your comments on TFX. Someone apparently forgot requirement number 1: “Fight and win,” but it was probably not a career-enhancer, anyway.
-d

There are still few prizes for second place in an air superiority contest. And there are still good reasons why ground support aircraft do not make good air superiority weapons, nor air superiority aircraft make good ground support operations craft. The missions are different, the pilot skills are different, and the career paths for the people involved are different.

How World War III became possible: A nuclear conflict with Russia is likelier than you think – Vox

Jerry:

I offer some interesting speculations on how WW-3 could get started.

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8845913/russia-war

IMHO, the author discredits himself at the end when he cites the prospect of Nuclear Winter. However; it is still interesting.

The bottom line is that the most probable trigger for WW-3 is NATO expansionism provoking Russia to assert itself militarily. The provocation of Ukraine crisis by Obama and Hillary Clinton by inciting the coup against a constitutionally elected government might go down in history as just as insane as the assignation of Arch Duke Ferdinand which incited WW-1.

James Crawford=

Russia doesn’t want a world war; they haven’t enough Russians to survive winning it. What Russia needs is Russians, in areas contiguous with Russia. They tried colonies (East Germany for example) and those did little for Russia. Putin is not Comintern; he is Russian. Of course he wants Crimea, and Kiev. They are part of the heart of Russia as he understands it.

I had reference to this in another conference; it is still valid, and may be of interest.

HOW TO GET MY JOB

Jerry Pournelle

This was originally published in the December 1996 BYTE as part of my regular column. I have added a few sentences here and there, but it’s mostly unchanged. It was true when I wrote it and I have no reason to think differently now.

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/myjob.html

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