Yearly Archives: 2015

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, November 03, 2015

Pledge week is over. Thanks to all the new subscribers and renewers. I was pleased to see some have returned to subscribing after many years.

My Surface Pro 3 with Pro 4 keyboard is working fine now, although I did have to put in a lot of time setting things up, and I’m not really done yet. In particular the Outlook Rules have some problems, but they appear to be just a matter of recasting; and this isn’t my position mail processing machine anyway.

All kinds of trivial problems take up my time, but they aren’t worth talking about; things that ordinary people do easily, but are hard work for me. Getting down on my knees to test a phone problem at the input socket, for example. Then discovering I can’t see, so getting back up, getting a flashlight, getting back down… Ah well. John DeChancie is here to discuss LisaBetta, our near future primitive asteroid mining colonies civilization – one that I would but in 2020 or so if I were writing it now, but we’ll have to set a bit later since we didn’t go the route I thought we would. Which means an even more bureaucratic Earth. It’s still a hard science novel.

Russian plane crash in Egypt: Midair heat flash detected

(CNN)A midair heat flash from Metrojet Flight 9268 was detected by a U.S. military satellite before the plane crashed Saturday in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, a U.S. official told CNN.

Intelligence analysis has ruled out that the Russian commercial airplane was struck by a missile, but the new information suggests that there was a catastrophic in-flight event — including possibly a bomb, though experts are considering other explanations, according to U.S. officials.

Gary Power went to his grave believing that his U2 was shot down by a missile, but it could not have been: he was too high.  Possony was always convinced that a Pakistani worker put a bomb aboard it. I thought so at the time, but if so the information was remarkably well concealed not to have come out since.  In this case a bomb is even more likely.

I don’t usually reprint press releases, but sometimes:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AUTHOR STEPHANIE OSBORN DEBUTS NEW HOLMES SERIES!

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE MUMMY’S CURSE DEBUTS!

Pro Se Productions, a leading publisher of Genre Fiction, proudly announces the debut of its latest novel featuring perhaps the most popular detective ever created, Sherlock Holmes.  Author Stephanie Osborn, creator of The Displaced Detective series, which also features Holmes, brings her exceptional skill and Sherlockian knowledge and love for the character to a new series for Pro Se.  Sherlock Holmes and The Mummy’s Curse, Book One of Sherlock Holmes: Gentleman Aegis is now available in print and digital formats.

Tommy Hancock, Editor in Chief of Pro Se Productions, states, “Sherlock Holmes isn’t simply the definitive detective. He is a character that has not only captured the imaginations of millions for over a century, but he also has untold potential in terms of stories to be told.  And Stephanie Osborn is ideal for tapping into the wondrous worlds that Holmes and Watson can still explore.  This first volume in Stephanie’s new series involves a Holmes and Watson we are all very familiar with at the beginning of their careers and near the start of their relationship.  What Stephanie crafts with Sherlock Holmes and the Mummy’s Curse is both a book that any Holmes fan would want to include in their library and a work that she leaves her own mark on.  She takes Holmes and expands his world, pushes the boundaries we know his universe within, and creates an adventure that literally readers will not be able to put down!”

Sherlock Holmes and the Mummy’s Curse is the debut volume in a new imprint from Pro Se Productions- Holmes Apocrypha.  Holmes Apocrypha will feature works that take Holmes onto adventures and in directions that go beyond Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original canon, including supernatural stories, science fiction interpretations, and more.

Holmes and Watson. Two names forever linked by mystery and danger from the beginning.

Within the first year of their friendship and while both are young men, Holmes and Watson are still finding their way in the world, with all the troubles that such young men usually have: Financial straits, troubles of the female persuasion, hazings, misunderstandings between friends, and more. Watson’s Afghan wounds are still tender, his health not yet fully recovered, and there can be no consideration of his beginning a new practice as yet. Holmes, in his turn, is still struggling to found the new profession of consulting detective. Not yet truly established in London, let alone with the reputations they will one day possess, they are between cases and at loose ends when Holmes’ old professor of archaeology contacts him.

Professor Willingham Whitesell makes an appeal to Holmes’ unusual skill set and a request. Holmes is to bring Watson to serve as the dig team’s physician and come to Egypt at once to translate hieroglyphics for his prestigious archaeological dig. There in the wilds of the Egyptian desert, plagued by heat, dust, drought and cobras, the team hopes to find the very first Pharaoh. Instead, they find something very different…

Noted Author Stephanie Osborn (Creator of the Displaced Detective series) presents the first book in her Sherlock Holmes, Gentleman Aegis series – Sherlock Holmes and the Mummy’s Curse, the debut volume of Pro Se Productions’ Holmes Apocrypha imprint.

Featuring a fantastic cover and logo design by Jeffrey Hayes and print formatting and logo design by Percival Constantine, Sherlock Holmes and the Mummy’s Curse is available now at Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holmes-Mummys-Curse-Gentleman/dp/1518883125/ref=sr_1_3_twi_pap_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446569718&sr=8-3&keywords=sherlock+holmes+and+the+mummy%27s+curse and Pro Se’s own store at www.prose-press.com for 15.00. 

The first volume in Osborn’s Sherlock Holmes: Gentleman Aegis series is also available as an Ebook, designed and formatted by Forrest Bryant and available for only $2.99 for the Kindle at http://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holmes-Mummys-Stephanie-Osborn-ebook/dp/B017IX33NW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1446569797&sr=8-2&keywords=sherlock+holmes+and+the+mummy%27s+curse and for most digital formats via Smashwords at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/590130.

Stephanie Osborn

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

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/1101/Antarctica-is-actually-gaining-ice-says-NASA.-Is-global-warming-over

Antarctica is actually gaining ice, says NASA. Is global warming over?

Not quite, scientists say. But new study results show the fallibility of current climate change measuring tools and challenges current theories about the causes of sea level rise.

Lawrence

Interesting.  The models don’t understand it of course.

http://www.news.com.au/national/western-australia/miranda-devine-perth-electrical-engineers-discovery-will-change-climate-change-debate/story-fnii5thn-1227555674611

Too Many Things Going On & Too Little Time

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nasa-latest-tests-show-physics-230112770.html
It may work or it may not. Possibility of thermal induced errors still need to be eliminated.
Still, “the fact that the machine still produced what March calls “anomalous thrust signals” is by far the test’s single biggest discovery. The reason why this thrust exists still confounds even the brightest rocket scientists in the world, but the recurring phenomenon of direction-based momentum does make the EM Drive appear less a combination of errors and more like a legitimate answer to interstellar travel.”
I think that they mean interplanetary. But, with the current state of NASA, they may mean interstellar.
Microsoft admits Win 10 spying can not be stopped!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/11/02/microsoft-confirms-unstoppable-windows-10-tracking/?utm_campaign=yahootix&partner=yahootix
I haven’t read this about MacOS yet. But, …

And, we can get from NYC to London in 30 minutes
https://www.yahoo.com/travel/we-live-in-pretty-cool-times-weve-already-got-160143322.html
That is, if we can get some unobtanium that won’t melt at 4000 degrees F and find passengers willing to take that flight!

And, yet another reason for HRC to lie about Benghazi!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2390642/400-surface-air-missiles-STOLEN-Libya-Benghazi-attack-says-whistle-blowers-attorney.html

I wonder if President Putin has heard about this? It would let him chime in about the next US Presidential election.
Star Trek is coming back!
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/star-trek-tv-series-works-828638
Hopefully this one won’t cause Gene Roddenberry to be spinning in his grave!

See; too many things to think about without my head hurting and all I want for Xmas is a copy of Jannisaries hot off the presses!

Peter

A New ‘Star Trek’ TV Series Will Debut in 2017

By DAVE ITZKOFFNOV. 2, 2015      (nyt)

“Star Trek,” that venerable outer-space adventure, is boldly going where it’s been before, but hasn’t been seen in more than a decade: back to television. The science-fiction program that chronicled the voyages of the Starship Enterprise and its intrepid crew will return to TV in 2017, CBS said on Monday, in a new series that will be introduced on the network but will be shown primarily on its digital subscription video service.

This latest “Star Trek” series will focus on “new characters seeking imaginative new worlds and new civilizations, while exploring the dramatic contemporary themes that have been a signature of the franchise since its inception,” CBS said in a news release.

It will be executive-produced by Alex Kurtzman, a writer and producer of the rebooted 2009 “Star Trek” movie and its 2013 sequel, “Star Trek Into Darkness.” Mr. Kurtzman has also been involved with other popular works of geek culture like the TV shows “Alias,” “Fringe,” “Sleepy Hollow” and “Xena: Warrior Princess.”

http://www.homeai.info/blog/news-stories/were-building-superhuman-robots-will-they-be-heroes-or-villains/

We’re building superhuman robots. Will they be heroes, or villains?

(iStock)

Each week, In Theory takes on a big idea in the news and explores it from a range of perspectives. This week we’re talking about robot intelligence. Need a primer? Catch up here.

Patrick Lin is an associate philosophy professor at California Polytechnic State University and an affiliate scholar at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. He works with government and industry on technology ethics, and his book “Robot Ethics” was published in 2014.

Forget about losing your job to a robot. And don’t worry about a super-smart, but somehow evil, computer. We have more urgent ethical issues to deal with right now.

Artificial intelligence is replacing human roles, and it’s assumed that those systems should mimic human behavior — or at least an idealized version of it. This may make sense for limited tasks such as product assembly, but for more autonomous systems — robots and AI systems that can “make decisions” for themselves — that goal gets complicated.

There are two problems with the assumption that AI should act like we do. First, it’s not always clear how we humans ought to behave, and programming robots becomes a soul-searching exercise on ethics, asking questions that we don’t yet have the answers to. Second, if artificial intelligence does end up being more capable than we are, that could mean that it has different moral duties, ones which require it to act differently than we would.

Let’s look at robot cars to illustrate the first problem. How should they be programmed? This is important, because they’re driving alongside our families right now. Should they always obey the law? Always protect their passengers? Minimize harm in an accident if they can? Or just slam the brakes when there’s trouble?

These and other design principles are reasonable, but sometimes they conflict. For instance, an automated car may have to break the law or risk its passengers’ safety to spare the greatest number of lives on the outside. The right decision, whatever that is, is fundamentally an ethical call based on human values, and one that isn’t answerable by science and engineering alone.

That leads us to the second, related problem. With its unblinking sensors and networked awareness, robot cars can detect risks and react much faster than we can — that’s what artificial intelligence is meant to do. In addition, their behavior is programmed, which means crash decisions are already scripted. Therein lies a dilemma. If a human driver makes a bad decision in a sudden crash it’s a forgivable accident, but when AI makes any decision, it’s not a reflex but premeditated.[snip]

SABRE dual mode engine

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/11967229/Want-to-fly-at-2500mph-BAE-Systems-does-and-is-willing-to-pay-20m-for-it.html

Seems like a very good idea. Wonder why it’s taken so long? In any case, the dual mode concept makes sens. Burn the same fuel and switch oxidizers as the flight regime changes.

—

Phil Tharp

You might want unobtainium for the leading edges…

Hybrid wolf/coyote/dog

Hi Jerry.

All in one, the evolution of wolves, coyotes, and dogs continues:

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21677188-it-rare-new-animal-species-emerge-front-scientists-eyes

Cheers,

Mike Casey

Of course one now wonders what is a species.  Mules are generally not fertile.  Wolf-coyote, dog-coyote breeds true fertile…

: Ranger School Cover-up

Dr Pournelle,

So I’ve been following this pretty closely and it’s getting better and better. We seem to have Ranger Instructors talking anonymously to the media and Congress and a cover-up stretching from the White House all the way down the the Commander of the Ranger Training Brigade.

http://usdefensewatch.com/2015/10/the-ranger-school-records-cover-up-continues/

“Congressman Russell contacted the Secretary of the Army on September 15, 2015, and requested the Ranger School records for Captain Kristen Griest and First Lieutenant Shaye Haver.

The Secretary of the Army stalled Russell for nine days and then asked for an extension to obtain documents readily available.

The Army waited another two weeks to tell Russell the documents had been shredded.

The Army refuses to tell anyone what the school’s policy is for the storage and destruction of Ranger School records.

The Army refuses to tell the media why they shredded Griest’s and Haver’s records.

The Army refuses to tell the media what they are doing with the third female graduate, Major Lisa Jaster’s records.

The Army wants us to doubt that journalist Susan Keating’s Ranger School sources are real because they are anonymous.

The Army wants us to believe that if Susan Keating’s sources were real they would come forward, when in fact, they are frightened of retribution. Considering the Obama administration’s treatment of whistle blowers, these fears are more than justified.”

I’m a graduate of the school and a former Infantry Officer and against women in the combat arms and in the military in general. I guess that makes me a dinosaur or a sexist/misogynist/reactionary or whatever you want to call me, but in spite of this I have trouble believing all this.

I happen to know Major General Miller, the commander of the Infantry/Maneuver Center (he was my adviser at the Infantry Officer Advanced Course many many years ago) and he just isn’t the type to do something like this. I’m pretty sure this will be his retirement job and a man like him will have many options after retirement. He doesn’t need to curry favor with anyone. For details on just what kind of man he is, see here http://www.benning.army.mil/common/leaders/Bio/pdf/MG%20Miller%20Bio.pdf

Further, the RIs wouldn’t stand for it. Many (probably most) don’t want women there any more than I do, but they wouldn’t stand for ANYONE telling them to make things easier on women. The way they’d deal with it would be to stay strictly by the book. If someone told them to do otherwise they would come out publicly, careers be damned, and tell the world. This is the E-6s that run the place that I’m talking about, not the Captains and Majors. They’d tell everyone to get bent and let the world know.

That’s just my take on it. There might be more to it. I know a couple of people at the Infantry School now and they tell me it’s a load a crap. That’s hardly authoritative but these are people I know and trust.

Matt Kirchner

Houston, TX

I have others who say it is all very real. 

BP Sees Technology Nearly Doubling World Energy Resources by 2050     (nyt)

By REUTERSNOV. 2, 2015, 9:06 A.M. E.S.T. 

LONDON — The world is no longer at risk of running out of oil or gas for decades ahead with existing technology capable of unlocking so much that global reserves would almost double by 2050 despite booming consumption, oil major BP said on Monday.

When taking into account all accessible forms of energy including nuclear, wind and solar, there are enough resources to meet 20 times what the world will need over that period, David Eyton, BP Group Head of Technology said.

“Energy resources are plentiful. Concerns over running out of oil and gas have disappeared,” Eyton said at the launch of BP’s inaugural Technology Outlook.

Oil and gas companies have invested heavily in squeezing the maximum from existing reservoirs by using chemicals, super computers and robotics. The halving of oil prices since last June has further dampened their appetite to explore for new resources, with more than $200 billion worth of mega projects scrapped in recent months.

By applying these technologies, the global proved fossil fuel resources could increase from 2.9 trillion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) to 4.8 trillion boe by 2050, nearly double the projected 2.5 trillion boe required to meet global demand until 2050, BP said.

With new exploration and technology, the resources could leap to a staggering 7.5 trillion boe, Eyton said.

“We are probably nearing the point where potential from additional recovery from discovered reservoir exceeds the potential for exploration.”

[snip]

A power source and vastly improved robots makes a different world.

That Voyager job req

Y’know, if they’d bothered to post an email or US Snail address, they’d RIGHT NOW be drowning under resumes from WELL-QUALIFIED applicants for that Voyager job.

I’m one of them.  A college buddy of mine is another.  I got my start in this crazy racket in 1970, in FORTRAN IV.  By the time I was getting paid for it, 64K was still a lot of memory.

There are a lot of people doing interesting things with Arduino boards these days who know a lot about small memory systems, who could learn the rest quite easily.

Not to mention that this kind of thing is what FORTH was designed to do (and there have been spaceborne FORTH systems before).

–John R. Strohm

Did You Hear About How Scientists Discovered A Two Billion-Year-Old Nuclear Reactor In Gabon?

<http://www.iafrikan.com/2015/11/02/did-you-hear-about-how-scientists-discovered-a-two-billion-year-old-nuclear-reactor-in-west-africa/>

When first reading about this years ago, I remember thinking that the premise that it was deliberately engineered would make a great story hook . . .

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

I believe I mentioned it in A Step Farther Out in the 80’s.

‘America has 100 nuclear power plants. We need hundreds more.’

<http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear-energy-vs-wind-and-solar/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

I think I said that in A step Farther Out too.  with the present Administration it cannot happen.

Drones programmed for light painting in the sky

What do you get when you put LEDs on a system of drones and then program them to fly in formation? Spaxels from the Ars Electronic Futurelab.

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

Chaos Manor View, Sunday, November 01, 2015

All Saints Day

Last night after I got home from Larry Niven’s Halloween party I saw, just before going to bed, messages from Eric Pobirs, my long suffering associate. He had spent part of the afternoon trying to revive Precious, my Microsoft Surface Pro 3, which I seem to have killed by trying to install the Surface Pro 4 keyboard; Precious was in an endless cycle of trying to boot up, realizing something was wrong, going into diagnostic mode, trying to fix it, thinking it had done so, then restarting, instantly perceiving that something was wrong, going into diagnostic mode, trying to fix it, thinking it had done so, then restarting – well, you get the idea. You couldn’t start in Safe Mode because it realized instantly that it was not doing well, went into diagnostic mode, etc., etc.

Eric tried booting from a USB drive, but to do that you had to get to the Bios or what passes for a Bios in a new Windows 10 machine. Not long before I left for Niven’s party Eric took off with Precious bound for the Microsoft store,

So when I got home my first message from Eric was that the Microsoft geniuses or geeks or whatever they call themselves couldn’t fix it either, but they did check the hardware and it was working and Eric had some ideas and was headed home. And just before midnight I got the short message: Precious lives.

I don’t know a lot more, but apparently much needs to be reinstalled; but the good news is that the Pro 4 keyboard is working fine with the Pro 3; and there’s yet another new build of the OS.

You can read all the details soon in an upcoming piece by Eric in Chaos Manor Reviews, which is my continuation of the BYTE column along with contributions from Chaos Manor Associates like Eric, and Peter Glaskowsky, and my son Alex; they’ll be up soon.

Pledge week ends; if you haven’t subscribed, time to do so.  If you don’t remember when you last renewed, this is the proper time to do it.  That way I won’t have to bug you for another quarter, and we can keep the ads off this place. Click here: Paying For This Place

Larry’s party was great, as usual, with lots of people I only see a couple of times a year at Niven’s place. I didn’t take many pictures; I’ll get a lot more at Hew Years. Here’s Alex, my friend John De Chancie with whom I’m writing an near future novel set largely in the asteroids, and LASFS secretary Kirsten.

I had to leave early; Roberta couldn’t go because she had to get up early for choir practice.

Fred Thompson, RIP http://news.yahoo.com/former-sen-fred-thompson-had-tv-film-roles-231012877.html?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma

He was my candidate for President, but he didn’t have enough fire in his belly; the very characteristics that would make you a good President make it very difficult to get the office.

Here’s Bill Gates on energy and the future. I disagree with him about the urgency of reducing CO2, but clearly we can’t go on forever as we’re doing; someone’s got to invest in new energy sources, it takes a long time to replace one energy economy with another, and we haven’t got the basic technology yet. Time to look for a miracle, or least a radical innovation. I came to that conclusion in the 70’s in my Galaxy columns.

Gates is always worth paying attention to.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-need-an-energy-miracle/407881/

Phil had this to say:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-need-an-energy-miracle/407881/

I’m not surprised he feels this way. Though his commitment to R&D on energy is not a bad idea at all.

Roland was a bit more trenchant

Bill Gates loses the plot.

<http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/bill-gates-says-that-capitalism-cannot-save-us-from-climate-change–b1xNpbL8O_x>

We need the research, and we’ve long known that there has to be a substitute – an effective and economical substitute – for fossil fuels.  Hurrah for Bill investing a couple of billion in some new ideas.  I would think it obvious, though, that before we have laws and taxes forcing people into an alternative, we had some idea of what that alternative is. At the moment the only viable alternative is nuclear fission; make the carbon taxes stiff enough and that will be the only way to go.  I used to hope for fusion, but it has remained “thirty years from now” for forty years; that hardly progress.

As to the safety of fission, it will never be totally safe; but it isn’t the scary monster it is usually painted.  The worst disaster was Japan, who saved a bit of money by building sea walls to resist a 100 year tsunami, and not designing their plants to be failsafe when the tsunami came. Note that Chernobyl was a military installation and a known dangerous design – a positive void reactor – but life is returning to Chernobyl.  TMI was a test to destruction that proved we know how to build plants to minimize the effects of full internal destruction.

Social justice has come to the United Nations and are we to expect another episode in Congress like we saw with the Iran “treaty”?

<.>

At the upcoming United Nations Climate Summit in Paris, participating nations have prepared a treaty that would create an “International Tribunal of Climate Justice” giving Third World countries the power to haul the U.S. into a global court with enforcement powers.

</>

http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/u-n-tribunal-to-judge-u-s-for-climate-debt/

This president gaveled himself in as chairman of the UN Security Council. This president is the first US president to do this. I will not get into the related article of the Constitution and the other popular arguments surrounding this action, but we can all agree that it is unprecedented and that this president leans more toward international institutions in some ways than previous presidents.

All this leads me to suspect this president might be more inclined toward this climate arrangement than I am. And I wonder if Paul Ryan would enable this agenda if this president pushed the point.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Be afraid. Be very afraid. But UN resolutions have no legal effect, and treaties that do need 2/3 of the senate to become law of the land.

‘In one survey cited, 82 percent of social psychologists admitted they would be less likely to support hiring a conservative colleague than a liberal scholar with equivalent qualifications.’

<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/opinion/academias-rejection-of-diversity.html>

I’m just surprised it’s only 82 percent. One suspects at least some of the respondents toned down their responses to appear to be more reasonable.

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

: Philosophical discourse 

This is taking philosophical discourse too seriously.

“I’ll give you a categorical imperative. Fuck you! How’s that for an imperative, you a priorist pig!”

Man Shot in Fight Over Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy in Russia

Man Shot in Fight Over Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy i… In the Russian port city of Rostov-on-Don two men were having a beer this weekend and talking about the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (of course), when something went…
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No comment.  None.  Really.

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

Chaos Manor View, Friday, October 30, 2015

I first opened this with an attempt to write a piece on China’s new two-child policy and the effects of their Mao imposed and brutally enforced one-child policy on their and our future; doubtless I will get to it, and probably write it next, but it’s getting late and I may not. Of course I was writing it at 4:05. Which is in the middle of Time Warner’s 4:00 PM daily net shutdown for this part of Studio City, so I couldn’t get to my links on data for the piece, and when I did – the Net doesn’t so much shut down as crawl to a near halt – I had another problem: my mouse right-click didn’t do much of anything. It’s a standard Microsoft redeye optical mouse, quite possibly one of the first they ever made; the standard mouse for Chaos Manor. I have several of them all acquired years ago, some, as I said, when they first switched optical for mechanical mice with mouse balls, others over time. I don’t think the newest is less than ten years old. I generally build my own machines – well, lately Eric does most of the work but it’s done here and I can claim to have supervised – and there it goes again.

My redeye mouse went wonky. The pointer moved, it tracked all right, left click worked fine, but right click did absolutely nothing. It didn’t take me long to notice because my typing since the stroke is two finger only and I often hit more than one key even with this Logitech K360 keyboard which has keys somewhat separated. Also, I often hit the wrong key. The result is I spend about as much time correcting a sentence as I did to write it, and if it weren’t for autocorrect I’d be spending more. Fortunately, hitting double keys in long words generally results in a unique error and once I teach that to autocorrect I never see it any more, which is one reason I can still produce text; but even so, there are plenty of red-wavy-underlined lines visible each time I look up at the keyboard, and compulsive as I am I must fix them before I can go on. And that requires right click.

Now that I know my mouse was dying I recall that the copy function was unreliable for a week or so past; I always cured it by restarting the machine, because right click seemed to work, and maybe it was a software problem; shutting down and restarting always cured it. Anyway, I tried that, it got long past 4:00 and the Time Warner gift of slowdown, and my right click still wasn’t functioning; and while dying mouse has never been a problem at Chaos Manor – at least since we lost mouse ball mice – it eventually entered my thick head that it could be a mouse problem.

I got out another Microsoft redeye mouse, attached it, and lo! the problem was solved. Right click worked just fine. Being me, I took the old mouse and sprayed it with Blue Works contact cleaner and dried it off with my towel, and lo! It worked. Alas, not for long. I wrote the first paragraph with it, and there it went again; the rest of this was written with another ancient mouse which seems to be working fine.

I even tried spraying the defunct mouse with Blue Works again, but this time it did nothing, and even I am forced to admit that it isn’t worth my time to try to revive a ten year old mouse.

As it happens, we’ll be going to Glendale tomorrow on an adventure to the Apple Store and also to the Microsoft Store, and I’ll buy myself two new redeye mice. If one can die, another can just as unexpectedly; they’re all the same age. And my time when I have the energy to write is at least valuable enough that it isn’t worth spending on dying mice,

It’s getting close to dinner time. I’ll post this and get back to China later. It’s an interesting problem: is the Earth over-populated, and can we reduce the population gracefully?

It’s still pledge week.  We got several new subscriptions this week, and the renewal of subscriptions is going at least as well as usual, or I think it is; I haven’t time to do a close analysis.  We operate on the Public Radio model, which is why I key it to the KUSC pledge drives.  I sure could use some new subscriptions.  If you’ve been here a while and like it, maybe it’s time to subscribe. Click here http://www.jerrypournelle.com/payingnew.html and get it over with…

Today China announced the end of their Mao-imposed and since then brutally enforced one-child policy. They even admit that the old policy was – well, not exactly a mistake, but not best – and they did not choose freedom as an alternative: Chinese couples will still need a license to have their two children, the bureaucracy that enforces that policy will still be in business and the Iron Law will have its effect, and one effect will be to abort unlicensed pregnancies.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a good column on all this, http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-new-two-child-policy-and-the-fatal-conceit-1446157377?alg=y and I recommend you read it. China is still trying to maintain control and still experimenting with social engineering.

The one-child mandate is the single greatest social-policy error in human history. After Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, his legatees were horrified to discover how little they had inherited. Despite almost three decades of “socialist construction,” China was still overwhelmingly rural and desperately poor. More than 97% of the country lived below the World Bank’s notional $1.25 a day threshold for absolute poverty, according to recent Chinese estimates. With a population still rapidly growing, China seemed on the brink of losing the race between mouths and food.

When I was an undergraduate I believed in social engineering, and I was very much convinced that the Earth was already overpopulated or nearly so. I was convinced by William Vogt’s Road to Survival and the ecologists, so much so that I sought out Rufus King at the University of Iowa and arranged to take his ecology course; where I learned a number of things including that not everyone calling himself an ecologist knows much about the subject; but that’s perhaps another subject. I was seriously concerned about over-population, and like most undergraduates with grandiose goals, I thought it was our business to fix these easily foreseen problems. I also thought it would be simple and rational, if only all the irrational people would get out of the way.

I have some sympathy with the Chinese, those not overwhelmed with political ideology but hoping to apply some rationality to obvious problems; and indeed, their worst enemies have to admit that the modern Chinese state has done a lot better than anyone expected.

It seems obvious that to reduce a population without simply killing a lot of people, you will have to pass through a period in which there is more work needed than you have workers to do it. People age, inexorably, and as they age their productivity rises, then declines; and when enough are in their period of declining popularity, they must be replaced with younger workers: now where are the younger workers to come from? Particularly if you care about what race they are, and you want cultural stability in any event. The Chinese have never been interested in the progress of anyone but Chinese; the communist ideology doesn’t recognize that, but Chinese history and tradition does. Perhaps the communist ideology blurred the obvious coming dilemma – there aren’t going to be enough Chinese workers.

There is one out: robots. Robots increase productivity enormously. Perhaps enough? Perhaps a much smaller young population can, with robots, produce enough to keep an increasingly less productive aging population not just in survival conditions, but the increasingly wealthy style that they are trying to become accustomed to?

It looks to be China’s only out; and for the nations of the West, and Russia, we can watch and learn, for our turn may be coming, even though not produced by social engineering.

: Ceres

Have you seen the latest update on the profess of the DAWN probe.
http://news.yahoo.com/dawn-probe-heads-superclose-orbit-dwarf-planet-ceres-193617377.html;_ylt=AwrXgyJEHjNWSSQA8NLQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTByb2lvbXVuBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg–
Your writing Science Fiction writing about Ceres were a great inspiration to read more about the rest of the solar system and beyond,. My background is in satellites in ground station operations and maintenance, as well as actual operation and maneuver control of Telstar. EchoStar and Sirius satellites.
Thanks
Bob (R. J.) Ballenger

Thanks

To save on weight, a detour to the moon is the best route to Mars

For a piloted mission to Mars, fueling up on the moon could streamline cargo by 68 percent.

http://news.mit.edu/2015/mars-mission-save-weight-fuel-on-moon-1015

Yet another reason to build a working moon base before trying to send men to Mars.

In case you haven’t seen this

The Rocket Man Who Wants To Beat the Billionaires

Deep in the California desert, an unknown entrepreneur is competing against famous billionaires for a chance to build the government’s next great spacecraft. He’s outmanned and out-financed. And Masten Space Systems just might pull it off.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a17574/masten-space-systems/

Monkeys to Mars

Travel to Mars is so easy a group of monkeys are being trained to do it:

<.>

Monkeys paved the way for us to reach the moon and now Russian scientists are hoping the animals will be key to getting a human colony to Mars.

Experts from the Russian Academy Of Science are training four rhesus macaques to travel into space and land on the red planet.

This training, which includes using a joystick and solving puzzles, should make them capable to man a mission within the next two years.

</>

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3291456/Monkeys-heading-MARS-Russian-scientists-training-macaques-solve-puzzles-travel-space-2017.html#ixzz3pngb2FGw

<.>

At the end of their training the creatures should be capable of completing a daily schedule of tasks on their own.

The scientists are hoping this will be achieved by 2017.

Dr Kozlovskaya said the main goal is to teach monkeys to perform a particular range of tasks which they will be able to remember.

‘What we are trying to do is to make them as intelligent as possible so we can use them to explore space beyond our orbit,’ she said.

The team is also hoping that the space monkeys will be able to train others and integrate them into the team.

</>

What if the monkeys learn they’re free and no longer need the Russians? Many decades from now, we may hear stories of a group of rogue monkeys who broke away from Earth and began settling other planets… =) ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

And alas, Dan Alderson is dead. His like may no longer be with us.

Voyager needs a programmer

Dear Dr. Pournelle,
Perhaps someone in your reading audience would like to take up the challenge. It seems the current engineer for Voyager 1/2 is retiring. 
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a17991/voyager-1-voyager-2-retiring-engineer/
So they need someone who is greatly skilled with Fortran and Assembly languages to step in and keep the probe running.    This is old-school programming at its finest; there are only 64kb of memory to work with, and this will be real-time programming , I suspect, with hard constraints. 
I’m a little disappointed. Voyager is the reason I got into computers in the first place, but now after years of writing database and object-oriented programs I don’t have anywhere near the experience required to do this kind of work. I’d be willing to learn ..  but I suspect “willing’ isn’t enough.   “Willing” doesn’t instantly make you an expert in real time software.
Respectfully,

Brian P.

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

Chaos Manor View, Thursday, October 29, 2015

Spent Wednesday (yesterday) in conference with Niven and Barnes, and lunch afterwards; we got a lot done, but the clear conclusion is that it’s my turn, and I owe them about a week of work. The Cthulhu War, (working title, probably not the final) is turning into a major and excellent project. It’s the third volume in the Avalon series. Both its predecessors, The Legacy of Heorot, and Beowulf’s Children were both best-sellers, and they hold up well. These are stories of founding the first interstellar colony in a world of slower than light travel; populating the universe at slower than light speed in a race with unknown competitors: we haven’t found them yet, but we have found life, and some it may be approaching intelligence; how long did it take us to evolve to interstellar travelling beings, and how many others are likely?

There is a novella, written after Beowulf’s Children but actually taking place between the two books; the necessity for keeping what happened in The Secret of Blackship Island from being known to the protagonists in Beowulf’s Children was not hard, and a bit of fun, but it turns out to have some serious consequences. Among other things, how do you keep secrets when there’s an AI that knows everything?

Remember, most of the passengers – the Colonists – went there in cold sleep or as frozen embryos. Children could not give informed consent about being frozen and sent off Earth. Thus there’s a real generation gap, because for the first twenty years there were no teen agers; only adults and children. And there’s still a generation gap between the Earthborn who rule, and the Starborn who do an increasingly large share of the work, even if robots do the menial labor… That was important in the first books; it’s even more so now. And Earth is not done sending colony expeditions…

Anyway, I’ve got several important scenes to do, and that’s going to take some of my time. The book progresses well, but this part is sort of my bailiwick. With luck you’ll never know what I did and what the other members of the team have done; we’re all quite active in writing this book.

Tonight is LASFS, and I’d give you the link to my page except that Time Warner has its usual 4: PM shutdown of the Internet. It will go away eventually—ah, it’s back. Anyway I’m going to the LASFS meeting, so this will have to be short.

Steve Barnes calling Jack Cohen for a Skype Conference. Ain’t technology grand?

The debate settled nothing, and wasn’t politically important; it was probably good practice for the candidates, but no one got knocked out, and maybe the Republican establishment is learning how much they are hated by the electorate, and seen as a lesser evil to Hillary – at best. And the media hates them, and perhaps they are learning that. We’ll lose at least one more candidate before Iowa as someone runs out of money. I rather hope it isn’t Carly Fiorina because I’m finding increasingly more reasons to like her, and she’s slowly moving up. Carson sounds better all the time, and he obviously has stamina and self control. Jed Bush is doing his duty and running but his heart isn’t in it. Trump is Trump; unpredictable and not controlled by any group. What you see is what you get.

The Republican Country Club Establishment has learned a few thing and forgotten some since they ran the only man Clinton could beat in the ’96 election; but they haven’t learned much, and have forgotten even less. They know that electing any Democrat will be a disaster to the country, so they think that the nation has no choice; people like me will have to vote for who they put up. The Primaries become very important; but you knew that. This is a very critical election. I wish Carly were more charismatic.

It’s still Pledge Week at KUSC and thus at Chaos Manor; if you’re sick and tired of me asking you for money you have only to hang on a bit longer – of course if no one subscribes or renews this place won’t be here at all and I’ll never ask you for money again. Actually, we’ve has several new subscribers this week, and the renewal rate has been pretty good. Not spectacular, but this is a Depression even if officially they don’t call it one.

They no longer count people who want work, don’t have it, and have given up looking for a job as unemployed, and since more and more do give up as this non-recovery wends on and the Debt grows and grows, the unemployment rate shrinks even as the number of people not working grows. The employment rate among young black males is low and getting lower; while the number of young black males murdered by young black males is growing. If Black Lives Matter, and they do, it is odd that no one in the Democratic Party seems to notice this. They wish to raise the minimum wage even higher; this means that the number of young black males who can do anything you would pay money to have them do gets smaller; but no one notices that cause and effect. Minimum wages might make sense when there is no alternative – the job has to be done – but a minimum wage for starting workers learning what they must do means there are fewer ventures and a lot of jobs just don’t appear.

But you knew that.

And it’s still Pledge Week, and if you have never subscribed, this is the time to do it. Click here

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html  and become a patron, or even a platinum subscriber.

If you have subscribed but don’t remember when, now is when you should do it. Click here http://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html and renew.

Scrambling Carrier-Based Fighters

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — The USS Ronald Reagan scrambled its fighter jets earlier this week after two Russian naval reconnaissance aircraft flew within one nautical mile of the U.S. aircraft carrier as it sailed in international waters east of the Korean Peninsula, according to 7th Fleet officials.

In the latest in a series of incidents involving Russian aircraft, two Tupolev Tu-142 Bear aircraft flew as low as 500 feet Tuesday morning near the Reagan, which has been conducting scheduled maneuvers with South Korean navy ships. Four F/A-18 Super Hornets took off from the Reagan’s flight deck in response to the Russian advance, 7th Fleet spokeswoman Lt. Lauren Cole said Thursday.

Full article at Stars and Stripes:

http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/russian-aircraft-approach-uss-ronald-reagan-prompting-us-fighter-jet-scramble-1.375709

Seems to me that this kind of stuff used to happen all the time in Soviet times.  Do our new generation of troops (and theirs) know how to deal with it?

Best wishes for your continued recovery!

David

Not so much after Reagan became President. But yes… We’ll see more of this of course

Military blimp goes AWOL for a joy ride up the East Coast

The Pentagon said Wednesday that U.S. fighter jets were tracking an unmanned Army surveillance blimp that tore loose from its ground tether in Maryland and drifted north over Pennsylvania. (Oct. 28) AP

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon got its blimp back.

It went AWOL from Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland on Wednesday, snapping a more than one-inch thick cable and hitting the skies on a joy ride over the farm fields and towns of eastern Pennsylvania.

It’s hard to hide when you’re a blimp, and at nearly the size of a football field, this one has attracted attention and Tweets and two fighter jets. The Pennsylvania governor issued a statement. The military, too. They were all anxious to let people who were monitoring the blimp’s progress, that, well, they were, too.

Confirmed predecessors to the Carrington Event

Jerry:

Massive solar storms in AD 744/745 and AD 993/994 have been confirmed by carbon-14 spikes both in tree rings and in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica.  More confirmation that such events are likely to happen every few hundred years.  We have yet to experience such an event in the Information Age.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151026112106.htm

Best regards,

Doug Ely

Extreme solar storms could be more common than expected

Jerry,

I am not sure there is anything really new in this article but it is brief and does mention an estimate (5 months) of the duration of power outages from a Carrington-like event were it to happen today.

Title and link follow.

Extreme solar storms could be more common than expected

​http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/extreme-solar-storms-could-be-more-common-than-expected/

Regards,

George​

We’ve discussed this before. It’s inevitable, but we don’t know when.

A new approach to solving “the ISIS problem”
Dear Jerry,
Did you notice this in Scott Adams’ blog:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/131952466891/how-a-hypnotist-would-solve-isis
{You can’t bomb an idea to death. So how do you ever defeat the idea that is ISIS?
To kill an idea, you need a hypnotist, or someone skilled in the art of persuasion. I’ll describe one way to do it. I do not expect any of the candidates to favor this approach. So what follows is not a policy suggestion so much as an example of how a trained hypnotist would kill an idea.
[As always, don’t take cartoonists too seriously. In this blog we kick around new ideas for entertainment. New readers of this blog need to know I am a trained hypnotist.]
A hypnotist would start by defining ISIS in a way that is true (enough) but provides some sort of psychological advantage. For example, you could start by defining the ISIS brand of Islam as “historical” as opposed to modern. That might not be the right world, but you get the idea. We want a label that is fresh (such as “low-energy” or “nice”) so we can imbue it with the qualities we want. In this model, we stop using the old language of “religious extremists” and similar labels because the old words have not helped us enough.
Then we A-B test historical Islam versus modern Islam to see which one does best.
The way you A-B test “historical” Islam is by first putting a wall around the ISIS caliphate, which means a combination of drones, mines, fences, moats, and whatever works. Neighboring countries will do the heavy lifting on the borders. They have the money and the incentive to keep ISIS out.
Some of you will say walls never work. And that is true if you are speaking in military terms. A wall won’t stop an army in the long run. But this wall would not be built to stop an army. Nor would it stop every individual with bad intent. It doesn’t need to.
We are trying to kill an idea with this wall. The wall would exist to define the territory where the idea will be tested. In this context, the wall can be a little bit porous and still work okay.
Once the border around the caliphate is mostly secure, we declare that “historical Islam” is on one side of the wall and modern Islam is (mostly) everywhere else. Instead of saying we want to kill all folks who subscribe to this “historical” brand of ISIS Islam, we say we want to see how their world thrives compared to ours. So our plan is to leave the Caliphate alone and see how they do.
Here’s the best part of the plan: Over time, our stated objective would be to drain from the caliphate all technology that was invented or manufactured by heathens. The ISIS-controlled caliphate would be left with an “historical” version of Islam. That would be our gift to them. We’re just trying to help.
We could remove modern transportation options from ISIS by bombing oil refineries and keeping borders sealed. I hope we can someday use drones to jam satellite signals over selected areas as well. Eventually all electric power plants would be removed from the Caliphate, and their electronic devices would become worthless.
But that isn’t enough. We also need to provide massive amounts of pre-modern farming supplies, food, and medical supplies, so the innocent population can eat, and also to reinforce the image that we are helping ISIS get to their “historical” version of Islam.
For example, we might airdrop plows and seeds and other early farming implements. And all of it should have a label that says we are supporting ISIS in its plan to live a pre-modern version of Islam. I would go so far as to provide copies of the Koran – lots of them – with no edits and no surprises. We might include a cover letter explaining our helpfulness and our desire to let the Caliphate thrive under its own set of rules.
The leaders of ISIS will have a hard time convincing the locals that the countries giving them free farming supplies are the enemy.
Once we create a “digital jail” for ISIS, where no one can use modern technology to communicate, and almost no one can leave or enter, we will also control their access to news. And that’s what you need to kill an idea.
Obviously we would need to be proactive about allowing innocents to leave the Caliphate. And by innocents, I mean women and small kids. The men of fighting age probably have to stay, so they can kill whatever is left of ISIS when the time comes.
The basic idea I am proposing is to switch from enemy mode (killing humans) to helpful mode (removing heathen technology). Instead of saying we want to end ISIS, say we want to give them a chance to show the world they are right. Just as soon as they give up their heathen-made technology.
If you want to kill an idea, you have to go after the idea directly. And the best way to kill an idea is with a friendly embrace and a bright light.
Trump says he wants to put a wall around ISIS and bomb their oil refineries. That’s how a Master Persuader approaches this sort of thing. }
Hope you sort out your “Surface problems” soon.
Regards,
Roy

ISIS under its own proclamation has no right to exist or rule if it has no territory; its purpose is to impose strict sharia law on faithful and infidels alike. You can kill the idea of ISIS as Kitchener did after Khartoum. The Mahdi springs up now and then, but he has to be successful; either he rules somewhere of he is not the Mahdi.

In re Islam and the death of classical civilization, per Messr. Jordan.

I highly recommend this book, which updates Pirenne (whom I always found

persuasive) and thoroughly debunks the absurd and ahistorical ‘they preserved classical learning’ propaganda to which we’ve been subjected for the last 150 years or so:

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006N0THLO>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

: Why Air Power Keeps Failing

I agree with the larger point, armies are generally army-centric, and ours is no exception. Look at air ops in Northwest Africa in ’42, for instance – we had adequate but far short of overwhelming air resources, but they tried at first to do a little bit of everything and spent some months achieving only modest amounts of anything.

Air supremacy is an excellent task for a separate air force – if you can afford it. And we certainly ought to be able to afford both that and dedicated professional ground-support forces, if we weren’t being pulled about as far up the diminishing-returns maximum-quality aircraft cost curve as it’s possible to go.

A quibble about WW II BoB, mind: The Luftwaffe understood just fine how to achieve air supremacy – go for the opposition’s air fields and support structure while also forcing them to come up and be atritted in the air. My read of ultimately why the Germans failed at the Channel is that the Brits (unlike everyone else to that point) had a good enough air defense that it was going to cost the Luftwaffe massive losses – on the rough order of half of their total air force – to grind the RAF into dust. German leadership (Goering) couldn’t stomach that price, backed off the proven winning approach partway, and commenced trying to find ways to win on the cheap – none of which worked.

Henry

Actually, Eagle started without realization by Goering that air bases were more important than airplanes; but the no one realized that fully for a long time. The Britain bombed Berlin, and Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to waste planes and time on London, and Britain was saved.

 

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