Thursday, November 10, 2016

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

Bringing us together.

Trump has called for national unity. Historically, that hasn’t worked in the past few decades. The Liberal Democrats are perfectly willing to work with Republicans so long as the Republicans adopt the Liberal agenda, but genuine compromise usually ends in “We won. Get used to it.” Congressional compromise offers have been met with “I’ve got a phone and I’ve got a pen, and I don’t need you.”

The national news media doesn’t report it that way, but that is what I’ve seen. I wish Trump well in trying to bring the parties closer together, but if one side believes that compromise means the other side surrenders, it’s impossible.

There were protest marches against the election results in many big cities. Apparently, there are those who do not accept the results of the election, despite Mrs. Clinton’s concession. Most were – relatively – peaceful, but some street activity was not. One was in Chicago. You may Google “You voted Trump. You gonna pay for that shit” to find this video: http://www.infowars.com/shock-video-black-mob-viciously-beats-white-trump-voter/ . There are others, although many have been taken down.

It is reported that Chicago police are investigating; I have no reports of arrests. This is not likely to encourage national unity.

Apparently, at least one Wall Street Journal columnist who misunderstood Mr. Trump for most of the campaign has been enlightened:

How Donald Trump Pulled It Off

His most-revolutionary move was to lighten up the campaign and keep his audience riveted.

By

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Donald Trump probably won’t get credit, even from those bending over backward to be charitable to last night’s winner, for his most-revolutionary endeavor—namely his effort to lighten up campaign rhetoric.

Even now many Republican anti-Trumpers continue to fume over his remark about John McCain: “I like people who weren’t captured.” It was disrespectful, yes. It was also a joke; a wisecrack, offered in response to Sen. McCain’s equally flippant dismissal of Trump supporters as “crazies.”

Mr. Trump never stopped being an entertainer in his campaign. Though his approach went over the heads of the media, in one way it was genius: He basically stopped trying to convince anybody soon after his famous escalator ride in the Trump Tower in Manhattan. He figured out early that his voters didn’t need any more explanation or justification. His argument was completely embodied in “Make America great again” plus his outsize public persona. He only needed to keep his fans jollied up, and fired up, for the long wait ’til election day.

The biggest embarrassment of this campaign has been the sodden pundits who kept insisting on taking oh-so-seriously his every remark. They never understood that Mr. Trump did not speak to lay out a platform. He was inventing almost daily a new episode of the 16-month Trump-for-president reality show to keep his audience from drifting off. [snip]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-donald-trump-pulled-it-off-1478680736

Mr. Jenkins is hardly my favorite columnist, but he does seem to have learned. I was disturbed by the McCain remark until I heard that the Senator had called all of Trump’s supporters “crazies.” Then it made sense. If you joke about me, I am free to joke about you. I would never have said what Trump said, but on reflection it was so obviously wrong – whatever you think of McCain as a Senator his service is unquestionable and Mr. Trump has to know that – that the humor of the exchange of remarks escaped me, as it did many people. After all, it is no less absurd or degrading to say that all those who support you must be crazy. Fortunately Senator McCain did not choose to escalate. I suspect they will eventually see mutual interests.

This was written just before the election. It remains true:

The Antonin Scalia Election

We cheapen politics when we look to courts at the expense of the ballot box.

By

William McGurn

When Americans find themselves inside the voting booth on Tuesday, for many the decisive factor will be which candidate— Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton—should fill Antonin Scalia’s empty seat on the Supreme Court.

This is no small thing. Still, whose vote will replace Scalia’s on the high court is only half the Scalia story, and perhaps not the important half. Beyond even his jurisprudence, this was a man whose wisdom was to appreciate that American liberty is rooted in the separation of powers—and that the chief means of accountability is the ballot box and not the criminal courts.

The left abandoned this principle long ago. From the special prosecutors who dogged Caspar Weinberger and Scooter Libby to the outrageous “John Doe” probes in Wisconsin of conservative groups such as the free-market Club for Growth, the left has a history of criminalizing political differences for electoral advantage. This year, alas, some on the right likewise pinned their hopes for Tuesday’s election on an indictment or news of a crime that would knock Mrs. Clinton out of the race.

Let’s stipulate that Mrs. Clinton may well deserve to go to jail. But look how the focus on “lock her up” has turned out: with disruptive, 11th-hour pronouncements by FBI Director James Comey first opening and then closing an investigation into newly discovered Clinton emails.

Truth is, Mr. Comey’s real outrage was his acquiescence to the handcuffs the Justice Department put on FBI investigators throughout the Clinton email investigation—especially Justice’s refusal to go to a grand jury, without which investigators have no good way to compel evidence and testimony. The principled stand for an FBI director would have been to inform the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, that unless she gave his agents the standard tools of an FBI investigation, he would resign and tell the American people why.

Instead, Mr. Comey proceeded with the constraints and then showboated with a July press conference absolving Mrs. Clinton of any prosecutable wrongdoing. Never mind that an indictment was not his decision to make.

No doubt Ms. Lynch would not have indicted Mrs. Clinton. But had Mr. Comey kept his mouth shut, she, President Obama and Mrs. Clinton would be answering for the decision—not to mention for the highly unethical meeting between the attorney general and Mrs. Clinton’s husband that would have remained secret but for an intrepid reporter. Now all Mr. Comey has to show for his concern for his personal reputation is to have added the FBI to the list of government institutions the public no longer trusts. [snip]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-antonin-scalia-election-1478564889

Scalia was a scholar who revered the original intentions of the Constitution, but as Mr. Justice Holmes once observed, the Court does read the newspapers. Of course the newspapers he read in his day had a variety of opinions and positions; they weren’t so monolithic as the main stream media are today. Replacing Scalia with someone similar would seem to be fair, but I doubt that Senator Warren and the Senate Democrats will allow it. This leaves Trump with his first big test, which is also a test for the Senate majority: they did little or nothing during Obama’s Presidency despite having majorities in the Congress for much of it. They pleaded that Obama would shut down the government and make them take the blame for it.

They do not have that – excuse? – now. They hold majorities, Trump has won the election and will be President, and the balance of the Court majority is at stake. The Democrats will plead that Trump should appoint a compromise candidate. Trump has promised to appoint as near as possible a Scalia clone. There can be no “compromise” or reaching across the aisle here. This will be a key issue. I am sure Mr. Trump knows this. I am not so certain about the Republican Senate leadership, although it has certainly behaved well under considerable pressure in refusing to confirm Mr. Obama’s “compromise” candidate. I look forward on this with both anticipation and a bit of fear.

Conclusions drawn from Results of US election

Hi Jerry
Great to hear of Roberta’s continued improvement. I am providing a Part 2 submission from Conrad Black regarding the US election. This time his focus outlines a succinct analysis of the results you and your readers may find interesting.
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/conrad-black-donald-trumps-assault-on-both-parties-will-make-america
This is a positive appraisal of the results, and provides a nicely summarized critique of why this event occurred.
Take Care
Sam Mattina

It is a good analysis. It also contains some truths. Here is one of them.

The latter group, including a number of the conservative intellectuals who stormed out of the Republican party and noisily slammed the door behind them, are claiming to be prophets who will be honoured, are proud of the martyrdom they have (unintentionally) chosen, and warn darkly of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. Such tendencies are less pronounced in the president-elect’s character than in the personality of his chief opponent, and the whole concept is nonsense, given the robustness of the constitutional strength of the legislative and judicial branches of the U.S. government. (All three branches have performed poorly during the past 20 years, which is ultimately why Donald Trump will be the next president, but they are at least proficient in ensuring they are not overrun by the other branches.)

The Republic is strong, and with the new Supreme Court will remain so.

“The unbearable smugness of the press”

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-the-unbearable-smugness-of-the-press-presidential-election-2016/

—

Phil Tharp

Comment would be superfluous.

Robert Reich gets it.

‘The power structure is shocked by the outcome of the 2016 election because it has cut itself off from the lives of most Americans. Perhaps it also doesn’t wish to understand, because that would mean acknowledging its role in enabling the presidency of Donald Trump.’

<http://robertreich.org/post/152998666340>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Amazing that he would make that comment; but no one has suggested that he is stupid.

Press Already Unhappy with President-Elect Trump

Associated Press

President-elect Donald Trump left New York for a White House meeting with President Obama on Thursday morning. He took off through a salute of water provided by airport fire safety personnel, but he didn’t take the press corps with him. Apparently, that has the media upset, because he’s breaking away from “how things are always done” with the press corps.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday refused to let a group of journalists travel with him to cover his historic first meeting with President Barack Obama, breaking a long-standing practice intended to ensure the public has a watchful eye on the nation’s leader.

Trump flew from New York to Washington on his private jet without that “pool” of reporters, photographers and television cameras that have traveled with presidents and presidents-elect.

Trump’s flouting of press access was one of his first public decisions since his election Tuesday.

Trump’s meeting with Obama on Thursday will be recorded by the pool of White House reporters, photographers and TV cameras who cover the president.[snip]

http://www.gopusa.com/?p=16974?omhide=true

I don’t know what this means, but it is likely to be significant.

President-Elect Trump, Paul Ryan and Wisconsin

Greetings from that part of “flyover land” known as Wisconsin. So glad to be able to say that this election my home state got it right.
Yesterday you stated that ‘Paul Ryan did yeoman work in delivering Wisconsin for Trump’ – actually not so much. After release of the Access Hollywood Ryan refused to campaign with or even be in the same location as Trump. I would say that Scott Walker, Sean Duffy & Ron Johnson helped to move WI to the Trump Train.
Best wishes and prayers for Roberta’s continued recovery – and yours as well.
One fiction question I’ve been meaning to ask – How did Grand Senator Bronson end up being from Wisconsin?

Tony Sherfinski

Unlike Rockefeller in 1964, Ryan did urge voters to vote the straight ticket. That was very likely the key to Trump’s win there. The Republican ground organization is strong in Wisconsin, and it urged the straight ticket vote. That too was significant. I am sure that Mr. Trump knows this.

Proxmire?

The Trump Presidency

Dear Mr. Pournelle:
I’m still processing this, but I think one thing needs to be said early: President Obama and Hillary Clinton are right that we now need to work together to make a Trump presidency successful.
I do not like him, trust him, or respect him. That is all irrelevant. Our United States need a successful president, and I need to work for that.
As a beginning: Mr. Trump has recently stated two priorities which, if we can achieve them, would be enough (if he doesn’t precipitate disasters) for me to consider him a good president. First, do no harm: but after this, if this election leads to a better result for blue collar Americans and also leads to a rebuilding of our infrastructure, that would be enough for me.
Caveats: Mr. Trump has promised to be a voice for people who have been forgotten. Yes. We need that. I have a hard time believing it. But perhaps this is his Prince Hal moment, when responsibility leads to a change change in direction. I will hope for that, I will pray for that, and if it happens I will support that with enthusiasm.
Mr. Trump promises to rebuild our infrastructure, our roads and our rails. Excellent. That’s been a long time needed. My caveat: that will be expensive. Fine. It would be money well spent. But where is it coming from? If it comes from more debt, that will scare me: although, even then, if it’s well invested the risk could be worth it.
I’m sure you understand that I remain concerned. From my perspective: I am looking at a presidency in which all three branches of government are controlled by a single party, with no effective checks and balances in sight, all led by a megalomaniac bully. What could possibly go wrong?
But I hope that discussion will never be needed. For now: what might be done to make the Trump Presidency successful for all Americans?
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

To begin, I think that it would be good to stop talking about megalomaniac bullies. I can think of many appellations to be made about others, many at present in high office, but I do not think this is the right time to be saying them. Why present them with remarks that would make them appear cowardly if overlooked?

Fortunately, Mr. Trump is accustomed to dealing with people who disagree with him to various degrees, and whose interests are not exactly his, nor his theirs; yet they must work together to get anything done. We will see.

I would not have run the campaign as Mr. Trump did – and I would not have won either nomination nor election. Clearly he understands those who voted for him – and those who voted against Mrs. Clinton and another term for Obama – quite well. He also knows that without Congress – people in both parties – he can get little done. He is said to understand the art of the deal. For now, I suspect we live with that.

Sharpton: ‘We Are Not Going Down Without a Fight and Donald Needs to Know That’

Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” in reacting to Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, Al Sharpton said, “We are not going down without a fight and Donald needs to know that.”

Sharpton said, “I think that we are in a real moment like Nixon. I mean, if you look at the backlash after the Great Society and of a lot of the unrest, that is what defeated Hubert Humphrey and brought in Richard Nixon. I was a kid. I remember it like it was yesterday. You had assassinations of Kennedy, King. Unrest. People go for extreme measures to respond. Trump played to that. I said that. He did all of the dog whistles. This is not Bernie Sanders populism. This is George Wallace populism that he’s doing. And I think that many people have got to call it the way it is. Now the question is how will he govern? But he cannot say he did not run a campaign that has created a lot of racial fears and a lot of divisiveness and he played to the crowd and he knew what he was playing to. I know him here in New York. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was playing to the worst elements. The question is now what are you going to do?”

He added, “And I think that there’s going to be — rather than going to a blame game, we need to analyze, this man’s going to be president and all that many of us have fought for during our lives is at stake. And we are not going down without a fight and Donald needs to know that.”

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/11/09/sharpton-not-going-without-fight-donald-trump-needs-know/

Not unexpected. See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/booming/revisiting-the-tawana-brawley-rape-scandal.html or http://nypost.com/2013/08/04/pay-up-time-for-brawley-87-rape-hoaxer-finally-shells-out-for-slander/

Tawana Brawley seems to be missing from the official biography of Mr. Sharpton.

going forward

Just a thought, what will we call the “Clinton News Network” now?
Driving the volunteer medical van in my town I’ve listened to a lot of Seniors during the campaign, I can tell you that there was no love for Hillary there. In fact I can’t remember anyone expressing an intention to vote for Hillary. But at the end of the day, she handily won the vote in my town and the state.
I think my youngest friend is barely forty, I really don’t move among the 18-49 crowd at all. But winning this election with the full support of ‘Last Century” voters is not a future winning strategy.
My hope is that Trump succeeds in proving that less regulation, less federal interference and more personal responsibly can improve the lives of everyone, including that damn 18-49 crowd. They can’t remember what they have never seen. So let’s show them.

John The River

sc:bubbles]

Reactor that produces liquid fuel from CO2 in the air to be tested in portable pilot plant

I wonder what the efficiencies of this process are. If they are fairly good, this would be a way to store excess production from solar/wind/etc. for later use.

The fuels we burn add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change. A new compact power plant is starting up in Finland that could help combat the problem by converting atmospheric carbon dioxide itself into usable fuels. The transportable chemical reactor uses solar power to convert CO2 from the air and regenerative hydrogen from electrolysis into liquid fuels.

http://newatlas.com/carbon-dioxide-fuel-pilot-plant-finland-kit-ineratec/46362/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=2369704afd-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-2369704afd-88920025

John Harlow

I’ve never heard of this, but I have written about other energy alternatives. I have no great desire to add CO2 without limit to the atmosphere; I’d be glad to see it stable. Of course with more nuclear power and space solar power satellites, we could determine just how much CO2 we want, testing various levels until we find an optimum. We don’t have to burn fossil fuels. For less – much less – than the cost of the Middle East Wars, we could have built fission reactors and told the Arabs we no longer need their oil – while paying retirement wages to the coal miners put out of work.

But I wrote all this forty years ago, and again when we contemplated the first desert war.

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

No comment.  None.  Really.

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

Chaos Manor View, Monday, October 5, 2015

It’s bedtime. I’ve worked on Mamelukes and sort of tended to mail, but I’ve pretty well neglected this place. I’ll get back to it shortly, but I’m on a fiction roll just now.

There are a few things to notice.

LENR Status

Hello Jerry,

A presentation on the current LENR state of play by a PhD Physicist from my old department at NSWC Dahlgren:

http://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.php/Attachment/386-IEEE-brief-DeChiaro-9-2015-pdf/

Short, not much detail, but there is apparently growing evidence that there is really a ‘there’ there.

Of course I’ll be convinced when I can by one at Lowe’s to heat my house or a subset thereof (or as one outfit proposes, buy a car with a 30 kmile ‘LENR tank’), but in the meantime I continue to HOPE real hard.

Bob Ludwick

If there’s even a small chance of a 30,000 mile car – 30k on one filling – there are plenty of investors who will want to get in on it. And I note that the Office of Naval Research has never given up on LENR. And that most research centers are leery of press conferences; next time it won’t leave any doubts. But, as you say, the evidence that something is to be found piles up, and we can hope.

OS X El Capitan and MS Office 2011 / 2016

Dear Dr Pournelle,

A word of warning to your readers: If you use Office 2011 or OS 2016 on OS X Yosemite, you may wish to wait before upgrading to OS X El Capitan.

OS X El Capitan breaks Outlook 2011 and almost all of Office 2016. Just about everything refuses to start or crashes repeatedly. I have experienced problems myself and they are also well documented at http://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/05/microsoft-office-2016-el-capitan-bugs/

Microsoft is working on it, apparently.

Best wishes,

Simon Woodworth BSc MSc PhD.

Thank you.

Snowden Drama

This whole Snowden Affair looks more like a soap opera now; not that it changes anything revealed but the characters and activities are getting strange. I wonder if things aren’t so good in Moscow anymore?

Maybe his recent criticism of Russian policy wasn’t a good idea?

<.>

Edward Snowden says he has offered to return to the United States and go to jail for leaking details of National Security Agency programs to intercept electronic communications data on a vast scale.

The former NSA contractor flew to Moscow two years ago after revealing information about the previously secret eavesdropping powers, and faces U.S. charges that could land him in prison for up to 30 years.

Snowden told the BBC that he’d “volunteered to go to prison with the government many times,” but had not received a formal plea-deal offer.

He said that “so far they’ve said they won’t torture me, which is a start, I think. But we haven’t gotten much further than that.”

</>

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BRITAIN_EDWARD_SNOWDEN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-10-05-13-50-39

Normally, if you’re a guest in someone’s home you abide by their behavior and if you cannot bear it then you leave. You do not tell others how to live in their own home. Is this fallout from that?

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

There is some probability that rational decision is not the governing phenomenon here.

Tactics, strategy, and politics

This article is worth most people’s time. While I presume you have a keen grasp of the subject matter contained herein, a past contributor

— whose name escapes me at the moment — mentioned the difference between doctrine and weapons systems. If I were at my PC I run a Google search on your site and name the contributor because the point was apt. However, I’m on my mobile phone and lack the time to do it so I respectfully request allowances in this matter.

Having said that, this article touches upon that point in more detail and applies that point not only in the military sense but also stretches into its implication for the body politic. the article mentions essays and statements by other people commented on the matter and you may find it interesting even if you’re already abreast with the substance of the discussion.

@WarOnTheRocks: If one cannot tell the difference between task and purpose, how can one become a strategist? http://ow.ly/T1xI9

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Actually, the necessity for doctrines is discussed in The Strategy of Technology by Stefan T. Possony, Jerry Pournelle, and Francis X. Kane. Of course most of the examples in that 1970 book are from the Cold War.

“These results demonstrate for the first time that, regardless of potential radiation effects on individual animals, the Chernobyl exclusion zone supports an abundant mammal community after nearly three decades of chronic radiation exposure.”

<http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/chernobyl-disaster-exclusion-zone-around-plant-has-become-wildlife-haven-on-par-with-nature-reserves-a6680396.html>

Hiroshima and Nagasaki support abundant bipedal mammal communities, too.

Kind of puts paid to the Union of Confused Scientists, doesn’t it?

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

As opposed to coal mine tailings and other fossil fuel sites… With sufficient energy you can deal with any chemical wastes. And Chernobyl was a weapons reactor, not a power reactor; no positive void reactors can be licensed in the US; that’s fundamental atomic law, written into the Atomic Energy Act by Edward Teller.

‘Cyber banging’ drives new generation of gang violence

Jerry

This is happening just south of you:

http://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-1003-banks-lapd-gang-shootings-20151003-column.html

“Many of the people who were shot this summer seem like inexplicable targets, neither robbery victims nor gang-involved. “Somebody just drives to where the person is, walks up, shoots them, gets back in the car and drives off,” Harris-Dawson said.

“We’re used to people beefing in public,” he said. “Now the whole conflict is happening on social media. And all of us — interventionists, police, the community — are in over our heads on that.”

I’ve stayed off of social media for professional reasons, so I’ve missed all that. And really, this seems to be as much of a time-waster as television. “We’re dealing with a different generation and we’re going to have to evolve,”

Inevitable, wasn’t it?

Dear Dr. Pournelle, 

It appears that Russia is making a play to become the new international arbiter of the Middle East. 

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/28/leave-it-to-vlad-and-the-supreme-leader-obama-iraq-iran-middle-east/

Foreign Policy’s correspondents are divided as to whether this blindsided the administration, or if this is the administration’s real plan for the Middle East — to abandon it to the Russians while we concentrate on our own domestic issues. 

Certainly the author of the piece believes the second is more likely, as Putin evidently did tell President Obama face-to-face that he was planning on escalating pressure on ISIS.  
The scope of the Pentagon’s Anti-ISIS training effort — all 60 recruits — does not project confidence in the effort.
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/247060-pentagon-only-training-60-syrian-rebels-against-isis

Huffington Post suggests that there are other “black” operations under way in larger numbers 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/four-five-fighters-pentagon-syria_55f9ad27e4b0d6492d63ed49
but, if so, they have neither been effective at containing ISIS or convincing the Russians of our seriousness. 
It seems that we are abandoning influence in a region we have considered of utmost importance since 1945. Regaining it will probably not happen without bloodshed. 
Respectfully, 

Brian P.

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

View from Chaos Manor, Friday, January 16, 2015

Monday, January 19, 2015

Friday: I am posting a stub to work on later. Larry Niven and Wendy All are to be here shortly.  (Well they got here as I was writing that.)

Monday : They were here and we worked on an old children’s book we started a decade ago. The story is complete or very nearly so, but Wendy has been so busy designing toys for Mattel that she has not completed the illustration – Now she can, and we will soon have the book ready to publish. It is a fairy tale about intelligent moles who are just discovering science and the scientific method, which they can employ in their war against the semi intelligent Weasels. A bit fantastic (but fantasies are), but it’s a pretty good story, for 8 and above kids who are not thrilled by talking sponges…

Saturday and Sunday were devoured by locusts, exercises, the exhausting drama of getting to church where Roberta sings in the choir and I sit in one of the handicap seats. I go in with the walker, which I am getting pretty good with. There are steps down into the garage that have to be taken, but the Holy Cross rehab therapists built a model of the steps when I was out there. They used little platforms, and we worked out the procedures to negotiate a double step down through a narrow doorway – down is harder than up – and all is well. Walkers work, a bit better than canes, and I got used to a cane after the cancer therapy radiation in 2008 destroyed y balance. I have got about 80% of what balance I had before the stro9ke, and now the key will be to do enough of the right exercises to be strong enough to overcome balance problems. A month in hospital even with physical and occupational therapy – they are not the same – can weaken you a lot. My advice to stroke victims is not to waste time – exercise as much as you can as early as you can.

More on that later. Thanks to all of you who renewed subscriptions or subscribed last month and this year. It is a life saver and I am catching up on the ability to type faster so I can do essays. The brain is still in here, although I wonder if the world is going mad…

Eric was here all day Saturday and we have solved a lot of the problems of computer connections.  Need  couple of fixes, but I can do the accounts and taxes down here in the old office now.  Slowly getting back to normal

I’ll post this now and start today’s essay. Stand by…

The wireless connect on this lap top is slow, but it is almost good enough

.Monday: I am going to catch up on Mail, some of which is important.

So there is mail.  Now let’s look at the day…  First I am realizing how dependent I am on the Internet working right.  It’s slow today, meaning Time Warner is slow, which is the way things were in 2004 or so before I got high speed Internet at all.  I lived with it then, now it drives me crazy.  So it goes.  What cannot be cured…  Over time these things fix themselves, and we are so much better off than we were that the improvements are the new normal.  When the Franks got to Constantinople, the Byzantines wanted to impress them with their opulence so they served them oranges and fresh vegetables in mid-winter. The height of delight available only to the wealthiest…  Now it is a right of the poor – in America.  We do not notice that most of the world does not have fresh vegetables except in harvest time. Or oranges at all.

Nasa climate scientists: We said 2014 was the warmest year on record… but we’re only 38% sure we were right

*

* Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies claimed its analysis of world temperatures showed ‘2014 was the warmest year on record.’

*

* But it emerged that GISS’s analysis is subject to a margin of error

*

* Nasa admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at all

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2915061/Nasa-climate-scientists-said-2014-warmest-year-record-38-sure-right.html

ltm

‘The NASA climate scientists who claimed 2014 set a new record for global warmth last night admitted they were only 38 per cent sure this was true.’

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2915061/Nasa-climate-scientists-said-2014-warmest-year-record-38-sure-right.html>

Roland Dobbins

hmmm

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