Monthly Archives: September 2015

Chaos Manor View, Thursday, September 03, 2015

Managed a three mile walk this morning, on the flat of course, but close to the daily walks I took before the stroke. The walker with four seven inch wheels was a little tricky to learn, but now I have confidence in it, and it was easy and comfortable. I hope to do at least two mile a day, five days a week, in future, weather permitting. I still don’t have any confidence in night walking, which I used to do a lot; my internal gyroscope doesn’t work at all, and while our streets are lighted, there are dark stretches with not enough – or might not be enough – visual cues. I might try driving tonight: Michael will drive me to my club in my car, and nearby is a big well lighted city parking lot nearly empty in the evenings but open all night: the perfect venue for that kind of test. If that works well and I expect it to, then I can contemplate short trips to the store in the daytime. I doubt I’d do many. Ray Bradbury got on all his life owning cars he couldn’t drive, and did rather well…

Later: it was still daylight when we reached the very empty lot, and I found I can steer accurately and stop where I want to. One more goal accomplished.

Obama Secures 34 Senators’ Support for Iran Nuclear Deal

Number guarantees deal can advance despite opposition in Congress

http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-secures-34-senate-democrats-support-for-iran-nuclear-deal-1441203473

It is now assured that the Iran “deal” – not a Constitutional Treaty but the President has assured us that unless 60% of the Senate votes to close debate, it is the Law of the land – will be agreed to. This means that the only thing keeping Iran from acquiring a nuclear force of at least some magnitude will be the will of the Ayatollah who is Supreme Leader under their Constitution. They will have the ability not long after they have the will, and they can keep that secret given the nature of the inspections, some of which not only require 28 day’s notice but have provisions restricting the nationality of the inspectors.

I do not know what, if any, plans we have for the war fighting forces need to deter Iran, and act if deterrence fails. The current Supreme Leader Ayatollah has been explicit in stating the deal does not change his enmity of the United States, whom he considers the great Satan, but then the Soviets under Khrushchev threatened to bury us, and we are not yet interred: but we did have SAC, an elite force dedicated to preventing The Big War (“Peace is our profession” ) but capable of fighting it and possibly winning it if deterrence failed.

As Herman Kahn said of Khrushchev, possibly he’s crazy, but is he that crazy? It was our job as cold warriors to make it clear that launching the first strike was really crazy, beginning with the basic plans. The big Project 75 survey of basing schemes, and finally strategic defense: a policy of assured survival to replace Mutual Assured Destruction – MAD – which we inherited from Kennedy/Johnson. Kennedy himself approved the first efforts, such as Bennie Schriever’s Project Forecast (Conducted by the late Col. Francis X. Kane, my co-author) and Project 75 directed by Bill Dorrance of Aerospace and edited by me. The best way to survive a nuclear war was not to have one; but the best way not to have one was to make sure the other guy would lose big, whatever he did to us.Our weapons would survive his best strike, and there would be enough to finish off his offensive forces while striking a terrible vengeance on anything he held dear. We had the weapons and the warriors to accomplish that no matter what he did. We can do that now; but give Iran a few years, and can we?

Israel has an even bigger problem.

We will be discussing nuclear strategy here; I hope to God there is some group somewhere in the Pentagon discussing that also. But we no longer have SAC. We no longer have the SIOP’s (Single Integrated Operational Plan). We no longer have DEFCON states. We have disbanded SAC.

And we do not have all that long to construct, recruit, train, and build the nuclear fighting force to face a nuclear Iran.

We may hope the Supreme Leader of Iraq believes in truce with the Infidels; he is not permitted to believe in peace. A deterrent force might make truce more attractive. We had best hurry to build one.

We no longer have a nuclear force that believes that Peace is our profession.

God help us.

We will look at principles of basing, problems of morale – how do you attract bright and responsible young men and women to serve for years at the duty of making sure nothing happens, while sitting on boring alert underground, waiting for calls that with luck will never come – learning little about military life and leadership or practicing skills that have little outside value?  What is the career path?  You don’t get to fly. You don’t zoom around in the wild blue yonder.  You sit in a hole in the ground listening for EWO EWO Emergency War Orders, Emergency War Orders, I have a message in five parts.  Message begins.  Tango. X-ray. Alpha…

The logic of deterrence is unforgiving.  We knew how to do it once.  We had SAC. It is gone.  LeMay went to his tomb having seen his beloved SAC accomplish its mission: End the Soviet Union without dropping any atomic bombs. Building SAC was no easy task. Building another will not be easier, and we are not even beginning. We are not even thinking about the requirements.

We need SIOPs, Single Integrated Operational Plans, to deal with possible developments, ranging from strikes at weapons only to vengeance and Armageddon.  We do not have them. And soon we will see the old cries go up. Better to live on your knees than die on your feet.  It is coming.  It is inevitable.

Or, Iran will acquire a Supreme Leader who wants peace in direct violation of the explicit instructions that there can be no peace outside the House of Submission; there can be only truce with those outside the House of Islam. Perhaps such a Supreme Leader will come forward and be appointed by the Council that selects such. And perhaps not.

In which case we need forces that make it plain that truce is better than immediate war, today, tomorrow, on Christmas Eve and the Fourth of July, on Maundy Thursday and Rosh Hashanah, year after year.  Will it be easier to build such forces than to build weapons?  Will it take less or more time? But if we do not start, we will not have them at all. The alternative is to pray that the Ayatollah chooses truce.

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

Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, September 02, 2015

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

I keep putting this quote and its source up for a reason: although the author was polite in saying “not well understood” he would have been correct in making a much stronger statement. Our models have not any understanding of this at all, and when there are data to contradict the increasingly expensive models, the usual practice is to “adjust” the data, or otherwise manipulate it; there is never much temptation to modify the expensive model. The map has become the territory, and observations at odds with the map are “adjusted”. New climate models are “validated” by how well they conform to the predictions of the existing models. The map has become the territory.

If I am ever proclaimed Emperor, one my first decrees is that everyone who proposes himself a credentialed climate scientist or commentator on climate science be required – as a condition of claiming credentials – be required to read, and demonstrate that he has read, Korzybski’s book Science and Sanity. All 900 or so pages of the blue peril, one of the hardest to read – sometimes painfully dull – books I have ever struggled through. That will accomplish several goals. First, it is very difficult – I would say impossible – to read all of Korzybski and remain unchanged.

Second, they will have demonstrated admirable stamina. It is not an easy book.

The book will, willy-nilly, change your way of thinking about language and science, and require you to practice a new way of looking at things. It will not do so by presenting anything startlingly new. Many know the principles of General Semantics although they may never have heard of the phrase. Alas, knowing the principles is not the same as applying them in daily life or in thinking about science. Most do not do that; it’s hard work, and takes a lot of rather dull practicing; rather like calculus, which is easy to learn in the sense that you understand its principles, but hard to know in the sense that you can apply the math to something practical like preliminary design of a lunar centrifugal orbital launcher – can it be built of known materials? How long must the arm be? At what speed must it rotate? A rather easy integral if you are used to doing that sort of thing, but if you didn’t do the problems assigned and the examples in the book, and get in the habit of doing integrations, it can be confusing.

Same with Korzybski. Most of what he says, at interminable length, isn’t going to astonish you although you will sometimes find yourself say ‘I never thought about it that way before’ the first time he says something. You won’t think that the twentieth time. You will think, why couldn’t I have skipped most of that? But, if you are fair, you will understand: practice is needed. Korzybski is changing the way you look at the situation by changing your thinking habits; or at least that is what you will do if he is successful.

Enough. I warn you, Science and Sanity is not an entertaining book. I will also say that for those who get it, it will change your life.

Korzybski
I haven’t checked this against my copy of the fourth edition, but an online, free, PDF of _Science and Sanity_ is at http://esgs.free.fr/uk/art/sands.htm.

Bud Couch

The web site says of this copy:

Permission is hereby granted to share electronic and hard copy versions of this text with individuals under circumstances in which no direct payment is made by those to whom the text is given for the text itself, the volume or other medium or online service in which it is included, tuition or other payment for the course or seminar, and so forth. This notice must remain a part of the text. Any other use is reserved to the European Society for General Semantics and requires prior permission. For further information, e-mail the ESGS.

From my cursory examination, this is a full and true electronically readable copy of the blue peril. It contains numerous prefaces which are worth your attention although that can be cursory. It contains the innumerable quotes from people most of whom you will know of as the introductory epigrams for each major section, and those are worth a bit more attention. And it contains the long and somewhat repetitious exposition, which is worth your full attention as it is training exercise; fortunately you will not have to encounter it again, but it is a form of training and I found it effective.

Many of you will find this pretentious, and for some who have sane thinking habits it may well be. Martin Gardiner made fun of it, but it is pretty clear he had only read about it, likely from tertiary sources.  I can only say that I read this book as an undergraduate, and it changed my life. I cannot guarantee it will have that effect on you.

Note that Korzybski wrote his treatise before Sir Karl Popper became prominent, and does not mention Popper in his bibliography. The Wikipedia article on Korzybski and a general search on “Korzybski and Popper” leads to more reading than I care to do.

I studied general semantics under Wendell Johnson at the University of Iowa as an undergraduate, and I found his book, People in Quandaries, very sensible. Neal Postman, who studied under Popper, says of People in Quandaries “I am tempted to say that there are two kinds of people in the world — those who will learn something from this book (People in Quandaries) and those who will not. The best blessing I can give you is to wish that as you go through life you will be surrounded by the former and neglected by the latter.”

That led me to Science and Sanity, the big blue 1948 fourth edition.

My copy is upstairs, and this is a picture of the fifth edition.

Unexpected Problems: Automated Cars

So, it seems automated cars and human drivers on the road don’t really mix. I had to chuckle at this one:

<.>

One Google car, in a test in 2009, couldn’t get through a four-way stop because its sensors kept waiting for other (human) drivers to stop completely and let it go. The human drivers kept inching forward, looking for the advantage — paralyzing Google’s robot </>

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/technology/personaltech/google-says-its-not-the-driverless-cars-fault-its-other-drivers.html?_r=0

That reminds me of how I used to drive when I started. I was paranoid that I’d cause an accident and not be able to keep working toward my license. Then I remembered how the “right of way” laws worked.

I think these robots have much to learn. Give them a few years in California traffic to update their algorithms and I think they could be fine.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Not what Brecht had in mind
The Solution wasn’t supposed to be an instruction manual…

Americans pride ourselves on being people who have a government. But these days, it more often seems as if we’ve got a government that has people.

And that government is even selecting who its people will be, having–within a generation–essentially imported a state’s worth of new people through immigration.

Since 1970, the number of “Hispanics of Mexican origin” in the U.S. has jumped from fewer than 1 million to more than 33 million. If all these Mexicans were a state, it would be the second largest in population in the country, trailing only California.

Did you vote to approve that immigration policy? Did anyone? In fact, the federal government allowed it to happen without any voter input. That’s by design.

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/207813/

KEG

The Solution
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Bertolt Brecht

Did Dog-Human Alliance Drive Out the Neanderthals?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/03/150304-neanderthal-shipman-predmosti-wolf-dog-lionfish-jagger-pogo-ngbooktalk/?utm_content=buffer66e8c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

“Neanderthals seem to have specialized in stabbing an animal at close quarters with handheld weapons and wrestling it down. We had weapons we could launch from a distance, which is a very big advantage. There’s a lot less risk of personal injury.
Add into that mix the doggy traits of being able to run for hours much faster than we can, track an animal by its scent, then with a group of other wolf dogs surround the animal and hold it in place while you tire it out. The advantage for wolf dogs is that humans can come in and kill from a distance. The wolf dogs don’t have to go and kill this thing with their teeth, thereby lowering the risk of injury and death from very large animals like mammoths. For humans, it meant you could find the animals a lot quicker and kill them more efficiently. More food, less risk, faster.”

Sounds awfully familiar to me.

Graves

Thanks.  I have long had the theory that dogs and humans are co-evolutionary partners…but I guess you all know that.

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

Tuesday, Sept 1, 2015

I’ve been busy, and tomorrow the gang is over for a story conference.

Roland sent this:

‘And for planting the seed, Jerry Pournelle and his “A Step Farther Out:

Those Pesky Belters and Their Torchships”‘.

<http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

That led to  a very old View, http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view471.html#Tuesday done in 2007 when we thought my brain tumor was something else. It has an explanation of what’s wrong with Shuttle – what was wrong in the design – and how NASA prevented USAF and the Navy from having space programs. It also has some stuff about Step Farther Out, which is now available http://www.baenebooks.com/p-922-a-step-farther-out.aspx from Baen as well as elsewhere, and Strategy of Technology which is in revision.  The old one is available, sort of,  by download http://baen.com/sot/ but has the wrong address – I no longer have the Ventura mail box.  If you think you want to send me something for this on-line copy, send bills to Chaos Manor, 12051 Laurel Terrace Drive, Studio City CA 91604.  There’s a lot in that week’s view.

The vice tightens:

<.>

A review of recently released e-mails shows that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly originated and distributed highly classified national security information. Clinton’s classified e-mail missives were not constrained to State Department staff, either. She also sent classified information to Sidney Blumenthal, a former Clinton White House operative banned by the Obama White House.

An analysis by The Federalist of e-mails released by the State Department late Monday shows that scores of e-mails sent by Clinton contained highly confidential national security information from the beginning, even if they weren’t marked by a classification authority until later.

</>

http://thefederalist.com/2015/09/01/breaking-hillary-intentionally-originated-and-distributed-highly-classified-information/

Fear not, skullduggery will prevail! Nobody wants to bet me that she won’t get a pardon — not even a gentlemen’s’ bet.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I have had many notes suggesting where I can get Bettyann, and I think I have solved the problem; many of the suggestions led to sources for the novelization, which is nor what I want; the original novella is what I remember, and while the novelization is more science fiction, it is not I

I’ll do better tomorrow.