Monthly Archives: March 2016

Chaos Manor View, Monday, March 21, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.

Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.

Various medical emergencies have devoured our time and continue to do so, but we are weathering our way through them. I managed to do some good work on Call of Cthulhu, which is the working title for the interstellar colonization that Larry Niven, Steve Barnes, and I are working on. It was pretty good, and I’m beginning to comprehend how I can work on-line for small stuff, and change to a local copy of Word for larger work, yet still get it to save to both a local copy and upload to the on-line copy, thus keeping them both more or less up to date. If two of us are working on the same document at the same time I dunno what happens. Even though we are working on separate parts; there needs to be some kind of signal to send. “SAVRE your work now, tell me when you have done so, and I have a big save. But if there’s an auto-save? Does it overwite his newest work with the old copy? I need to look into this.

Long time ago, Larry and I would work on what the heck we wanted to, save on a Zip drive, and when we got together it was trivial to merge the two documents; where they differed it showed both the original and the changed text for a given instance. We could choose which we liked. But that was the old Word. They’ve improved the process in the new versions, and so far I find neither Larry nor I have figured out how to do it. I’ll have to do some experimenting, I suppose. I used to like doing that, but then I was getting paid to write columns about it. Of course some of you are paying me to this.

I have many interesting comments on the free trade issue, but they will have to wait until I have a bit of time. Apologies.

If you are at all interested in public education, read this, then see that everyone else you know reads it. It explains very simply one of the major roadblocks to any reform of the public education system.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/on-the-front-lines-of-the-teacher-tenure-battle-1458504511

On the Front Lines of the Teacher-Tenure Battle

I agonized as unionized staff defended a system that protected bad teachers but not children’s futures.

By

Cami Anderson

March 20, 2016 4:08 p.m. ET

An appeal is under way of the landmark 2014 Vergara v. California ruling in favor of nine public-school students who courageously challenged state laws they said deprived them of a quality education. The ruling by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge struck down California’s teacher tenure, dismissal and “last in, first out” layoff laws on grounds that they violate the equal protection clause of the state constitution and “disproportionately affect poor and/or minority students.”

Opening arguments in the appeal, which began Feb. 25, had me reflecting on the disheartening lessons I learned regarding teacher’s contracts and labor laws during the five years I served as superintendent of New York City’s Alternative High Schools and Programs (District 79).

In 2006 my team and I were charged with improving the lives and academic outcomes of some of our city’s most at-risk young people. About 30,000 students ages 16 to 21, most from low-income families of color, attended our education programs in drug-treatment centers, juvenile detention, in jail on Rikers Island or in the basements of high schools. From the start it was clear that many of these resilient and brilliant young people—trapped in what some call the “school-to-prison pipeline”—had limitless potential, if only they had caring, quality educators.

Not long into my term, however, the ugly reality of the dysfunctional systems working against our students hit me. Far from setting the high expectations our students needed to beat the odds, many teachers and staff reinforced our students’ deepest self-doubts. The young people who needed the best, most motivated educators sat downwind of policies that meant they too often got the least-effective educators.

At the time, most teachers attained tenure after three years in New York. In District 79, most teachers had attained tenure decades before I became superintendent. (Under California’s now-unconstitutional tenure law, teachers achieve tenure even more quickly: 18 months or less.) [snip]

The rest of the op-ed essay gives more facts. Ninety-nine (99) per cent. of the high schools receive a “Qualified” rating in their annual assessments, while fewer that 40% of high school students graduate. It costs $100,000 and takes two years to fire a teachers who habitually show up late, or abuse students, and even if the Superintendent can get a termination through, it can and often is overturned by arbitration.

“More shocking, if a teacher is merely incompetent and delivering mediocre lessons, the process is twice as long and costly, even though, as evidence in Vergara v. California established, the damage to students is equally as devastating.”

There’s more. And of course the California court decision cannot be implemented. It is being appealed, to state courts, and if they do not overturn it, eventually it will reach the Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. Meanwhile, the poorer the school the fewer resources they have to resist the transfer of unwanted teachers to their schools; not that it matters much. The upper classes have, for the most part, abandoned the public schools entirely, except for a few favored ones such as Carpenter in Studio City; it is considered one of the best in LA School District. In any event it will be a while before the decision will ever be implemented; I expect it never will be.

A Logic Named Joe: The 1946 sci-fi short that nailed modern tech . The Register

Jerry

Dig this: 70 years ago Murray Leinstar published a brainstorm –

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/19/a_logic_named_joe/

Ed

Published just before I discovered Astounding. Still interesting. But don’t forget “The Twonky”, an AI story of much the same vintage by Henry Kuttner and Catherine Moore. And much darker, of course.

“[Sheriff’s Deputies] wearing bulletproof vests stood alongside a Humvee with a gun turret on top.”
An armored vehicle with a (machine?) gun turret atop it, for a local sheriff to use on the citizens who elected him.
But nothing is wrong in these United States, during this Presidential election.

Protesters block main road to Ariz. Trump rally

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI and JACQUES BILLEAUD, Associated Press

Associated Press – Associated Press – ‎Saturday‎, ‎March‎ ‎19‎, ‎2016

Protesters blocked a main highway leading into the Phoenix suburb Saturday where Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump was staging a campaign rally…

http://a.msn.com/r/2/BBqFPoM?a=1&m=en-us

The practice of disrupting political opponents’ rallies with thugs is hardly new; it is only in modern times that the disruptors are excused, while those holding the rally are blamed.

CRISPR A Cautionary Easter Update

Dear Jerry:

One of the great tales of exploration has expired at the hands of molecular biology.

Legend has it that a defrosted haunch of mammoth somehow found its way from Siberia to New York to be served at the annual dinner of The Explorers Club in 1951.

Last year, a call for souvenirs of the event went out, and it is now reported that DNA testing has revealed that the dish was actually Mock Mammoth Soup, based on post-pleistocene turtle meat, quite possibly the quality canned product then marketed by Bookbinders fish house in  Philadelphia.

But this discovery pales in comparison to the promise of more exotic fare, now that molecular chefs have got their hands on the new CRISPR gene editing technique :

http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2016/03/can-presidential-banquets-survive-6th.html

Happy Easter to all !

—

Russell  Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics Harvard University 

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

Chaos Manor View, Friday, March 18, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.

Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.

I went to bed reasonably early, and slept through the night, woke up just before 8, didn’t need a Sudafed, went beck to bed and got up essentially just in time to be dressed by 10. Felt good enough to tell myself I was really recovering from my cold, but an hour or so later I knew better. Today was better than yesterday, and I’m pretty sure that tomorrow will be better still, and we’ll make church and brunch Sunday, but I have to take it easy. I still can’t work very long or indeed very well; which is a problem because there are parts of the book I’m doing with Niven and Barnes that I’m needed on, and I have a lot of work to do on the asteroid mining AI novel John DeChancie and I are working on, and it is about blooming time to finish the next Janissaries novel. All of them are whacking good stories and ought to sell well, which is just as well because I don’t work very fast since the stroke. I have to painstakingly correct half the words I type since I keep hitting two keys at once. It’s still faster than writing with a quill pen, as I keep telling myself.

And no, I wouldn’t be better off giving this place up, because I put in all the time I have energy for on fiction; alas, as I get older, I have less of that, but at least I can talk about scenes with my partners; that’s not as frustrating as having to correct every darned sentence so that I forget what the next sentence was going to be. I suspect I am going to have to change my work habits. Maybe it really is time to learn to dictate. Tough after all these years, of course.

I’ll have more on free trade when I can think better. Sand I haven’t forgotten education and how to resuscitate the public education system.

I wrote this in another conference in response to some comments about the former governor of California:

You misunderstand Arnold.

I first met him at an agency party (we had the same agent); he was then the strongest man in the world and that and Conan was all we knew about him. He was very pleasant, and by chance the next day he met my wife in Nieman Marcus — it was a pre-Christmas party, and she was shopping for a present for me, we just having made a big sale (may have been Hammer, it was that long ago). He spent half an hour helping her look.

I know other such stories, all true.

He ran for governor as a lark, and when he was elected he got a pretty damn good team together to draft some fundamental propositions and constitutional amendments. They were pretty damned good.

The campaign for governor didn’t get very bitter — most thought he was a joke and the pro’s didn’t bother spending any money smearing him.

But the long knives came out over those propositions. Nurses in uniform at rallies screaming curses at him although most of the health professionals I know thought his reforms were needed and good; but wow did the unions hate them. It was the same all over: organized labor in particular called him the Austrian Hitler. He hated it. It really hurt him — he has a thinner skin than you might imagine. It got uncomfortable at home, too, what with his wife being a Kennedy clanswoman.

So when his propositions failed, he said the hell with it. They want crony government and gemutlicheit they can have it. Never took the job seriously again.
I’m not excusing him; he took the job, and he didn’t resign when he lost interest in it. He spent the rest of his office years making nice with everybody. Sure he became a joke and knew it, but it was better than nurses in uniform screaming NAZI at him

I also wrote, in response to some remarks about Operation Paperclip which brought a number of German technical people to the USD after The War:

Did you ever meet any of the Paperclip people? I did. One worked for me, another was a consultant, and we all learned to respect Werner. They were Germans, but I never met a Nazi; certainly none who did not deny believing in Nazi ideals. I was Willi Ley’s successor as science editor of Galaxy; he left Germany early; but he was friends with a number of the Paperclip people who stayed. About half the Verein fur Raumshiffart stayed in Germany during the 30’s; many of the others came here and formed the American Rocket Society, and the Society for the Advancement of Space Travel. They welcomed the old VfR who came with Paperclip.

We learned a lot from them. Shouldn’t we have?

This morning’s mail opened with this:

New and improved ransomware. Swell

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3045206/security/teslacrypt-ransomware-now-impossible-to-crack-researchers-say.html#tk.rss_all

Eric Pobirs

Given all my frustrations I suspect that having to pay ransom for all my files would be a bit more than I could bear, and since I wasn’t being very creative this morning anyway, I decided I’d spend part of the day disarming that threat anyway. The only sure solution is backup files they can’t get out without they burn down my house, and actually even that wouldn’t do it if I do things right. The solution is to have three enormous off-line disk drives, and back up to each in rotation. One stays in the safe deposit box or a fireproof safe. The other two are in the house. They are put on line only when I am backing up to that particular drive, and it comes off line before I put another on. Then, periodically – ideally every week, but it’s more like every month – I burn an incremental update backup from the big RAID assembly Eric built and everything backs up to. That results in a fair number of disks nor; when I first started to save all my work, I could get just about everything I have ever written on one DVD, and actually if I confine myself to my own works I still can; but if I include all the Outlook pst files, it takes many.

It took about for hours to be sure I have everything redundantly backed up, but that wasn’t really time I could spend on anything else. I could read the new Robert Goldsborough Nero Wolfe prequel, in which Archie tells how he met Wolfe and came to work for him. It’s not bad; Goldsborough hasn’t got 19 year old Archie fresh from Ohio perfectly, but then that would be a very difficult task for anyone. Archie’s style changed over the years, and post-war Archie writes a lot better than Fer-de-lance Archie did – whether Rex Stout get better, or he planned it that way would be a good writing class discussion. But the Goldsborough book reads well. He seems to have forgotten that Saul Panzer was married in the early Depression era books, before Panzer became indispensable, and he’s too hard on the early Orrie Cather, but it’s a good read. If you liked the early Nero Wolfe stories, you’ll probably like this.

Rick Hellewell says:

Firefox and ad-blockers

I use Firefox (latest version), and have the settings set to block all popups (in about:preferences#content  – type in that in the URL bar), and don’t have a problem with popups.

I ignore all the ads.

I wouldn’t recommend his ‘I don’t use any other automatic updating’. IMHO, that is asking for trouble.

…Rick…

And in fact the hijacking of my system by Windows 10 seems to have also removed mu AdBlocker extensions to Firefox, which is why I didn’t get all those horrible popups on Alien Artifact before Windows 10, and also why I haven’t been getting them on Swan and Precious, which have always had AdBlocker going. I had to reinstall it – it’s easy – and I have no more problems. I don’t understand why anyone would pay for the popups I was getting; they’re unendurable, so the effect is to make you avoid the sites where they happen, especially if they actually take you to a new Tab and open a new site. Why would anyone ever go back to a site that did that to them? They can’t have any respect for their readers. And I had to correct every single word in that sentence. So I’m getting tired and I’ll have to close up shop soon.

Eric adds:

                Earlier today, Ace of Ace of Spades HQ ( ace.mu.nu ) was lamenting that he was at risk of having his site do something awful to one of his readers.

                This is why I run AdBlock. It is a thorny issue, in that I don’t want to deprive deserving sites of the ad revenue but the risk is just too great. These days, it looks to me that advertising feeds on web sites are the biggest source of malware infections. E-mail attachments are still a big one, too, of course.

Eric Pobirs

Considering that I grew up in a radio station announcer-salesman’s house (my father later became General Manager of WHBQ right after the War, starting as a commission only radio advertisement salesman in the early days of the Depression), I’ve got a healthy respect for advertisements and one’s duty towards the people who pay for your entertainment, but despite rumours we never put subliminal advertisements on the air.

Romney’s Trying To Help – Run Away!

Jerry,

I see Mitt Romney has endorsed Ted Cruz – but in what I fear is an amazingly damaging way. Tempted as I am to see deliberate GOPe perfidy here, it’s probably just more of the same utter GOPe cluelessness that disastrously lost 2012.

I’ll quote myself from a letter I wrote you in February of that year, when Romney and Gingrich were going at it hammer and tongs in the primaries:

“..Romney seems to only win so far (or effectively tie, in Iowa) by using negative ad barrages that depress Republican turnouts.”

and “This is at least assurance that Romney’s organization is competent at driving down opposition turnout, something that may well be a factor in the general election…” Only Romney wimped out in the general and treated Obama far more gently than he had his conservative primary opponents (making it abundantly clear who he saw as the real enemy.)

and “..will the beaten-down turnout among Romney’s Republican opponents linger? In Florida, that could lose the election.” There, and elsewhere, it did.

In other words, Romney not only planted the seeds of the current anti-GOPe revolt, he did it so clumsily that an amateur outsider could spot the problem (well, the immediate problem; I don’t pretend to have predicted how it would metastasize four years later) the winter before that election.

Today, Romney posted this on his Facebook page:

“The only path that remains to nominate a Republican rather than Mr. Trump is to have an open convention. At this stage, the only way we can reach an open convention is for Senator Cruz to be successful in as many of the remaining nominating elections as possible.”

“I like Governor John Kasich. I have campaigned with him. He has a solid record as governor. I would have voted for him in Ohio. But a vote for Governor Kasich in future contests makes it extremely likely that Trumpism would prevail.”

“I will vote for Senator Cruz and I encourage others to do so as well, so that we can have an open convention and nominate a Republican.”

Is it just me, or might he just as well have said “vote for Cruz tactically, so we your self-appointed betters can then nominate yet another GOPe squish at the convention. We will subsequently be really surprised when once again you all stay home and we once again lose.”

Mitt, if you’re going to endorse Cruz, ENDORSE CRUZ, or shut the hell up.

disgustedly

Porkypine

I’m sure Romney thinks he is being best for the party, but his abysmal lack of understanding the voters is why Trump was able to get where he is. In a well-run party he would never have given a thought to running.

Peggy Noonan today

http://www.wsj.com/articles/will-the-gop-break-apart-or-evolve-1458257138

Every time I read an article like this, I think of Obama. Obama had no qualifications to be president and yet he was elected twice. Trump has successfully run large corporations and made money and payrolls. The problem with the political class is they really think they know best when in reality, the people who live in this country know best.

My 10 year old was studying last night for the name the states test. I got to looking at the map. There is a vast part of this country beyond the coasts!

—

Phil Tharp

 

I have always found Peggy worth listening too, but she has been in with the Republican Establishment for many years after she was first snubbed as a Reaganite by them. She gets Trump and his supporters better than most of the Washington Establishment.

Good American Thinker post
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/03/death_of_america_why_this_presidential_election_isnt_as_important_as_people_think.html

Gerald Turner

So Much For Transparency…

Jerry,
An article posted on MSN from the API… “US govt sets record for failures to find files when asked” (http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-govt-sets-record-for-failures-to-find-files-when-asked/ar-BBqBI6v?li=BBnbcA1).
WASHINGTON — When it comes to providing government records the public is asking to see, the Obama administration is having a hard time finding them.
In the final figures released during President Barack Obama’s presidency, the U.S. government set a record last year for the number of times federal employees told disappointed citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn’t find a single page of files requested under the Freedom of Information Act. In more than one in six cases, or 129,825 times, government searchers said they came up empty-handed, according to a new Associated Press analysis.
The FBI couldn’t find any records in 39 percent of cases, or 5,168 times. The Environmental Protection Agency regional office that oversees New York and New Jersey couldn’t find anything 58 percent of the time. U.S. Customs and Border Protection couldn’t find anything in 34 percent of cases.[snip]

Kevin L Keegan

How Does America “Reshore” Skills That Have Disappeared?

<http://craftsmanship.net/reshore-skills-disappeared/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Good question.

more reaping of the whirlwind

https://www.aei.org/publication/an-open-letter-to-the-virginia-tech-community/

Charles Murray explaining fact vs. politics to Virginia Tech.

—

Phil Tharp

If you have not read this from Murray, you simply must. It’s important to follow the rules in social science or you get voodoo.

Subject: Search functions on modern computers

Jerry, the other day you quoted Eric Pobirs as saying, “The search function is designed to find, quickly, user files, not system or program files. This is how mature modern systems work. Much like the modern automobile owner doesn’t need to know much about how the stuff under the hood works. New cars are not nearly so friendly to tinkering as their ancestors but as consumer products are far more reliable and refined.”

I have to take issue with this. As you know, I run Fedora Linux on all of my computers. I use the Xfce Desktop Environment, but that’s not important here. From my point of view, and that of millions of other people around the world, Linux is a mature, modern system. I don’t know of any search function in Linux, either in a CLI or a GUI, that limits you to your own user-created (or downloaded) files. All of them allow you to search any directory you’re allowed to read, including those containing the system files owned by root. In fact, there’s a command, whereis, that will tell you exactly where any Linux command is located, and where the manual page for it is. There’s also the command which, that tells you which version of a command you get if you don’t specify the path. (This can be a help if you have a non-standard form of a command in a directory that’s either not on your path, or after the directory with the standard version.) If this is what Microsoft now considers a “mature modern system,” I’m very, very glad that I stopped using their products long ago, especially with their current attitude toward allowing users to decide if and when they’re going to “upgrade” to Windows 10.

Joe Zeff

True for those interested in the details and what’s under the hood. I just want to get my work done. I find I need Word and can use other Office tools, and they work; and they are often revised in response to security threats. I haven’t time to be a UNIX or Linux guru.

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

Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, March 16, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.

Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.

The saga of my Windows 10 hijacking continues. Alien Artifact, an Intel Core i7 2600K CPU running at 3.4 GHz with 16 GB of memory – a sweet spot computer when he was built – has run Windows 7 until Sunday morning – see Sunday’s View – when I found that during the night he had been hijacked by Windows 10, and there didn’t seem to be much I could do about it.

Before you start writing me about that. Some notes. First, I know that I could have done something about it; it’s simple and easy or nightmarishly complicated depending on your computer sophistication, mental awareness, patience, and time available. For various reasons I decided to accept the fait accompli and live with Windows 10. I had an awful experience with Windows 8, and better but still dismaying experiences with early versions of Windows 10, but I have also got Windows 10 on my Session Pro 3 (not much choice there) and on two desktops, both built later than Alien Artifact, so I have been learning to use 10; but my main system was Windows 7 until it was hijacked.

Second note: if you want to know what your CPU is, you have to remember it’s Control Panel > System. Cortana doesn’t know. And when you do find it, don’t expect to copy it to paste into what you are writing. For reasons known only to the Microsoft Genius Club whose members think of ways to annoy users, you can’t copy any of the data in Control Panel > System.

Today I was trying to catch up on Luanne, a comic strip that’s in my wife’s newspaper but not in mine, and discovered that Windows 10 allows terrible things to happen with Firefox. Firefox looks the same on Windows 7 and 10, but on 7 I never had this problem, and now I’ve got it: I’m getting hijacked by popup ads, and if that wasn’t bad enough, popup new tabs taking me to all kinds of places I don’t want to go. It has been happening all week, but generally when I ;look at places I’m not familiar with: but this was the same Luanne tab I have been using for years, only now I get new tabs advertising odd things I don’t want, as well as popup ads that cover the cartoon and can’t be closed.

I didn’t have all that with Windows 7; I’ve had it ever since 10 was forced on me. And my recovery from my cold is taking a while; I’m not undertaking any tasks that require cerebration.

For all the irritations – mostly incredibly silly user interface and help files – Windows 10 really is more productive – at least for me – than Windows 7. And once I recover from this cold – I just know I will – I’ll get back to doing other silly things so you don’t have to.

 

 

‘The benefits from trade to the American economy may not always justify its costs.’

‘What seems most striking is that the angry working class — dismissed so often as myopic, unable to understand the economic trade-offs presented by trade — appears to have understood what the experts are only belatedly finding to be true: The benefits from trade to the American economy may not always justify its costs.’

<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/business/economy/on-trade-angry-voters-have-a-point.html>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

I’ve always intended to write a rigorous analysis of free trade, in particular looking at the assumptions, both explicit and hidden, in David Ricardo’s theory of free trade and the various extensions since then. It is a standard belief of libertarians and most conservatives that free trade is a nor very mitigated good, and that free trade nations are nearly always better off than their counterparts.

The alternative to free trade is protective tariff; a tax on imported goods because they are imported, collected at the customs houses; tariff for a long time was the principal source of revenue for the United States. When I was a lad, we learned in school that the Democrats wanted “Tariff for revenue only” (don’t raise tariff, but keep it reasonable so you get more money) while Republicans were for “protective tariff” (keep tariff high so that industry can develop here; they only sell you cheap goods so that you won’t develop industries).

In the “solid South” I grew up in, there were few Republicans; it was almost a joke. One reason for that was that the Union States, where most of the manufacturing and weaving and general factory goods production was centered, imposed very high tariff on industrial equipment. This kept the prices of manufactured goods high by preventing the South from competing; the South had not many factories, and had to pay the high prices charged by the North, since we couldn’t buy the equipment to build our own factories.

I won’t argue the truth or falsity of this proposition: I merely state that it was taught in public school classrooms and was universally believed.

Lincoln did not believe in free trade (which was a good reason for Southerners to relish it). His famous analysis on tariff was: “All I know is that if I buy a shirt from England, I have the shirt and the money goes to England. If I buy it from Massachusetts, I have the shirt and the money stays in the United States. The arguments then centered on whether we had a favorable balance of trade: did exports exceed in dollars brought in the money that imports cost in dollars paid out? That argument is made to this day. Except for China, the US generally exports more dollars’ worth of goods (airplanes, for example) that it imports. With China it is not that way, and the US economy was once described as opening containers of consumer goods and borrowing the money to pay for them.

The usual arguments against free trade generally come down to “don’t export jobs.” American workers can’t compete with people who work for what is to us starvation wages; imports bring good at lower costs, but you don’t save THAT much on consumer goods – the savings don’t have that much effect on your life – while the worker whose job is lost has been ruined. Look at the hell hole Detroit and its environs have become! In 1940 to 1045 Detroit was the symbol of American know how, and produced tens of thousands of tanks, artillery weapons, airplanes, trucks: we won the war with that, and we would not have had we been buying our cars from Japan and China!

A compelling argument in its way, and not easily refuted, especially when talking to a once middle class family now living in an old house requiring a great deal of maintenance and eating surplus cheese and whatever is available for food stamps; possibly with a little subsidiary income from under the table hiring out for handyman work. You are unlikely to convince that family that Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage proves they are better off than they would be if we put tariffs on imported cars.

I will add that that family’s friends, who still have middle class jobs, are paying the taxes for those food stamps, and Obamacare for our worker family and are terrified that their jobs may be exported; or to the more skilled worker who discovers that his work as a house painter is being automated on new construction houses, and meanwhile he can’t save money because he must pay the taxes to pay for Earned Income Tax Credits, otherwise known as negative income taxes. From his point of view, if they were all working, he wouldn’t have to pay taxes to support his out-of-work neighbor and kids with Entitlements; and perhaps he workers who will pay for his entitlements when his job is gone.

And I’m out of energy, it’s time for a dinner I don’t feel like eating, and we can return to this theme when I’m feeling better. I know that economists say there is no question about it, you just have to read Ricardo and you’ll know that free trade is better that high protective tariff; but I’ve read Ricardo and I didn’t see anything about the externality of Negative Income Tax and Entitlements; and I’ve yet to see an economic model that does take account of them. I do know that we have a median personal national debt of over $50,000 for every man, woman, and child (illegal immigrants excluded I sup[pose) and while I just might be able to come up with my wife’s share, and my share, I don’t think all of us together could pay off the debt owed by my wife and I and our children and grandchildren, or what we’d have left to live on if we did; and I know I’m nowhere near the worst off of my friends and acquaintances.

So I really think the economists need to do a better job of explaining free trade rather than just saying Smoot-Hawley over and over.

 

CJCS

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/03/keep-americas-top-military-officer-out-chain-command/126694/?oref=defenseone_today_nl

Salient points made here.  Our government/military mix has always been that the military is commanded by the President – a civilian.  The JCS was created to provide that military advice to the President and coordinate military actions/budget across the services – in effect liaison to the Congress and President.  Even without being in the chain-of-command, the CJCS still wields considerable power and influence – but cannot direct troops anywhere.

David Couvillon
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; 
Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; 
Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; 
Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; 
Chef de Hot Dog Excellence;  Avoider of Yard Work

 

‘Instead, the design of the QWERTY keyboard was designed for Morse code, with significant regard given to putting the most frequently used letters on the home row.’

<http://hackaday.com/2016/03/15/the-origin-of-qwerty/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Amusing; I must admit I always believed in the standard theory, but on reflection I don’t know why. Neither will you after you read this.

 

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

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, March 15, 2016

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.

Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.

Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.

 

 

I have solved the problem of searches in Windows 10, and it makes sense.

 

Eric Pobirs sums it up nicely:

               The search function is designed to find, quickly, user files, not system or program files. This is how mature modern systems work. Much like the modern automobile owner doesn’t need to know much about how the stuff under the hood works. New cars are not nearly so friendly to tinkering as their ancestors but as consumer products are far more reliable and refined.

                Because early versions of Windows made no effort to segregate user space from system space, it encouraged users to develop bad habits that they retained long after Microsoft had finally begun addressing those deficiencies. The first big step towards this was designated directories for users to save data, such as documents. This gave the system and installed apps a default location to use. This also simplified frequent backups as staying within those directories made it likely the default backup scope would cover everything important, which meant the average user was far more likely to get satisfactory results.

                In the period between XP and Vista two things were decided. First, fast search mattered, and that meant some stuff would be favored over others. Second, search by default should not show system and certain other types of files because the average user only tended to get in trouble that way. I can remember the days when people would need to reinstall Windows because they deleted a critical directory with no interference from the system.

 

 

Mostly, I’m attempting to recuperate from a cold. It got much worse last night, and today I have that familiar head stopped up, ache all over, just want to go out of being feeling. I had split pea soup for dinner last night, but even that was a bit much to bear today, so I’ve had thin gruel.  I’m sure I’ll be all right by Thursday when I am supposed to entertain the LASFS, but I’m sure not going to get any work done today.

 

 

 

My Windows 10 condolences

Dear Jerry:

Several months ago Windows 10 installed itself on my computer right after I clicked the button saying not right now (or whatever it said).

Windows 10 is a severely crippled version of Windows 7. The start menu is ugly, dysfunctional, and inflexible. The new Edge browser is a caricature of a web browser. I wondered if it had been an undergraduate software project rather than something developed by experienced professionals. The loss of color in title bars and the flatness of dialog boxes seemed a giant step backwards for a user interface. And system controls are excessively deep in the settings menu system.

Fortunately within a couple of hours of being bludgeoned into using Windows 10, I discovered Classic Shell. It restored my hierarchical, nested folder submenus to a Windows 7 level of usability. And its free. Highly recommended. It has worked flawlessly. And it allows you to switch to the Windows 10 menu with a single click should you want to remind yourself just how badly Microsoft messed up its user interface.

http://www.classicshell.net/

And fortunately Internet Explorer was still available with Windows 10. So I am no longer bothered by Windows 10 as it now looks and behaves pretty much as my old Windows 7 did.

For backing up only changed files and for comparing contents of folders I recommend Free File Sync. I back up my daily changes to three different external devices with just a couple of clicks, but I suspect your archiving needs are more complicated than mine.

http://www.freefilesync.org/

Best regards,

–Harry M.

 

Well, now, I wouldn’t say that.   Windows 10 is actually an improvement in many ways. Its problem is that the instructions for using it are wretched. I’ll have a lot about that in Chaos Manor Reviews when I recover enough to write it. Windows 10 is meant for large, fast, modern systems, and it’s pretty good for those; I presume it won’t self install on any system that’s not powerful enough for it. One secret I found about Search: you don’t need a “go do it” command when you type in a Search Window, whether it’s Cortana or an Explorer instance. Once you type something it goes for it like a retriever dog, and if you continue to type it redirects itself.  There’s no consistent indication that this is happening: it just does it, and sometimes there’s and action bar and sometimes there isn’t, and if the area searched is huge it may take a while – tens of seconds to minutes – for the first signs that anything is happening to appear.  It’s taking me longer to correct my c

paragraphs than it does to write them, so I won’t go on.  Stay tuned.

I will say I wouldn’t put Windows 10 on an older slow system; at least I don’t think I will.

Another thing, FreeCell addicts will need to get a free copy of the old Windows 7 FreeCell.  You actually have it if you were converted from Windows 7 to 10; it’s not all that hard to find, and searching for it online doesn’t take long if you can’t find it.  More on that when I can type again.

 

Over half country dislikes Trump

“Mr. Trump’s real problem is, something over half the country as a whole, among these a major slice of conservatives, dislikes and distrusts him.”
Hhmm. Based on voting percentages, about 70 to 75% of voters (so far) do not like Cruz enough to vote for him. That compares to about 60% that didn’t vote for Trump. Don’t people that make these claim, quoted at the top, look at the other side of these numbers?

Walt…

 

Apples vs. Oranges Jerry,

I failed to state what should have been obvious – I didn’t specify “as measured by nationally polled favorable/unfavorable ratings” when I said “Mr. Trump’s real problem is, something over half the country as a whole, among these a major slice of conservatives, dislikes and distrusts him”.

This apparently led reader Walt into the error of logically equating that statement to “…about 70 to 75% of voters (so far) do not like Cruz enough to vote for him.” (It’s 71%, FWIW.) (For Trump so far, 65%.)

In a multi-candidate field, “did not vote for” is not at all the same thing as “actively rated unfavorably in a poll.” Put another way, Walt is equating “failed to like more than all others” to “actively disliked”.

For actual data, check out

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorableunfavorable-5493.html

Trump’s current overall rolling-average unfavorable are 61%. The highest unfavorable rating of any winning Presidential candidate since

1992 is 49%. QED – nominating him would be electoral suicide for the Republican Party.

Hillary’s current rolling average unfavorable number? 53.3%, also higher than any modern winning candidate. Which points out the size of the opportunity the Republican Party would be blowing by nominating the even-more disliked Trump.

Cruz’s equivalent number? 48.6. Not great, but electable.

Forgive my irascible tone, but it’s an important point, and claiming “it ain’t so” based on non-equivalent numbers no more refutes it than would sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears and humming very loudly.

Porkypine

 

And over half the nation’s voters say Hillary is not honest or trustworthy.  Those are the top two candidates for President. We live in interesting times. I am not making predictions at this time. I will remind you that Trump has gathered some attractive endorsements from fairly astute politicians.

 

We never lost a major engagement

Dear Jerry –

Since the subject of Vietnam has come up, I’ve got to comment.

Speaking as a two-tour Vietnam vet, I agree with your larger assessment of why we lost. It just goes to show that the adage, “Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics,” has considerable truth.

That said, your correspondent who stated that “We never lost a major engagement” should qualify that with a discussion of what constitutes “major”. If getting a battalion chewed up and spit out doesn’t count, I’m not sure what does. I refer, of course, to the battle of Ong Thanh, 17 Oct 1967. An arrogant battalion commander fed two companies of 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment (1st Div) into an ambush by a reinforced VC regiment, in terrain which severely hindered the air and artillery support which was our biggest advantage, at 10:1 odds. That’s 10:1 in favor of the VC.  After inflicting 90% casualties on the US forces, the regiment withdrew in good order, and 22 VC bodies were recovered. God save us from  more engagements like that one, and let’s not consign the lessons it teaches to the memory hole.

Regards,

Jim Martin

I never said we didn’t have some incompetent tactics, especially as we transitioned from guerilla war to Battalion and Regimental engagements. As the German General Staff commented, Americans know less and learn faster than anyone they had ever fought.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/03/14/theres-a-new-theory-about-why-some-cancer-therapies-fail-its-about-timing/

There’s a new theory about why some cancer therapies fail. It’s about timing. (WP)

By Ariana Eunjung Cha March 14 at 10:09 AM

One of the most disheartening things about cancer care today is the amount of guesswork that goes into drug treatments. It isn’t uncommon for patients to go through two, three or more therapies before finding success or running out of time.

Scientists now know that genetics explain why some drugs may work work miraculously in one person but not at all in another. Mike Hemann and Doug Lauffenburger of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have just come up with evidence that timing may be just as critical.

The researchers reported in the journal Cell that their work shows that tumors evolve though various stages and that some are more vulnerable to drugs than others. This suggests, Hemann said in an interview, that there may be a “windows” of opportunity for drugs that had previously been written off as failures.

The team’s work grew out of observations that the new arsenal of targeted therapy cancer drugs often appeared to have initial success, but that tumors came back within four to six months after having developed resistance. By using computational models and experiments on mice, they found that the progression of this resistance doesn’t appear to be linear. That is, the patients aren’t necessarily becoming more resistant to a drug over time. Instead it appears that the period of transition from a non-resistant state to a resistant state actually may be the time when it is most sensitive to drug therapy.

“You can think of it as replacing a roof on a house,” Hemann explained. “The most sensitive time is when you’ve taken down the old roof but before you’ve put the new one back on.”

Hemann said that if providers can predict the evolution of a tumor, they can target it along the way.

“If we know the route to resistance,” he said, “we can ambush tumor cells.”

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/03/12/after-a-year-in-space-astronaut-scott-kelly-is-retiring-from-nasa/

‘We must always challenge ourselves’: Scott Kelly to retire after year in space (WP)

By Niraj Chokshi March 12

Less than two weeks after returning from a year in space, Scott Kelly says he plans to retire from the astronaut life.

Kelly, who has amassed a cult following thanks in large part to the steady stream of photos from space he posted to social media, said Friday that he will retire from NASA effective April 1.

“Our universe is a big place, and we have many millions of miles yet to explore. My departure from NASA is my next step on that journey,” Kelly said in a Facebook post.

Kelly, who turned 52 in February, returned from his year-long mission earlier this month, earning himself the American record for most time spent in space. He orbited the earth 5,440 times — traveling an estimated 143,846,525 miles — and conducted three spacewalks during that trip.

He also became something of a celebrity along the way. From space, Kelly appeared on early-morning and late-night television and posted hundreds of photos to Twitter, amassing more than 1 million followers.

But his primary mission was to help further NASA’s understanding of the effects of extended time in space on the human body.

“In his year aboard the space station, he took part in experiments that will have far-reaching effects, helping us pave the way to putting humans on Mars and benefiting life on Earth,” Brian Kelly, director of Flight Operations at NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in a statement. Scott Kelly previously visited space in 1999, 2007 and 2010.

He joined the U.S. Navy in 1987 and NASA in 1996. And while he plans to retire in just a few weeks, Kelly said his will continue to work with the space agency.

“I remain ever committed and dedicated to the service of human exploration and advancement whether in space or on Earth,” he said. “… I will provide periodic medical samples and support other testing in much the same way that my twin brother, former astronaut Mark Kelly, has made himself available for the Twins Study throughout this past mission.”

Kelly was born in New Jersey in 1964 and is a graduate of the State University of New York Maritime College and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

 

Project Orion documentary must See!

Dear Jerry,

Highest Recommendation, a BBC documentary on the history of Project Orion. Believe it or not, even the conservative./leftish “Beeb” overall finds merit in the idea. Along with many of those interviewed, I cannot help believing that someone is going to build one of these and get out there. It’s just too tempting, and there is no shortage of desperate people who will realize it’s raining soup, and this is the bucket to catch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYoLcJuBtOw

Petronius

When Freeman Dyson first proposed Orion for serious consideration, I was a member of the advanced proposal evaluation at Boeing. The senior members of the team were sharp cookies. I got to play with it, and our conclusion was that we could not only land a man on the Moon, we could put up an entire Colony and possibly start making some revenue:  movies, of course, but low gravity – i/6 gee –, various materials testing, an absolutely biologically isolated test lab, and various other ideas.  I understand there was resistance from SAC – Orion used a lot of nuclear warheads – and of course all kinds of environmental problems.  But it sure was fun to play with!

 

 

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