Category Archives: View

View 731 Saturday, July 07, 2012

We had the LASFS memorial meeting for Ray Bradbury this afternoon. A bit of a low key event, since the LASFS members who knew Ray back when he was an active member are pretty well gone. Ray was of an age when he was required to take a physical examination for the World War II draft. The story is that he went to the physical and they said what’s the lowest line you can read on that eye chart, and Ray, blinking behind his thick glasses, said “What eye chart?” I can well believe it: I know for a fact that Ray could not recognize me from five feet away unless I spoke. He always remembered friends’ voices, but he could not recognize faces beyond a yard or so.

Ray later told Robert Heinlein about his military physical exam, and Robert is said to have said “You didn’t try hard enough.” I have no idea whether this is true – Robert never told me that story – but it is a matter of public record that Bradbury did volunteer Red Cross work during the war. I was friends with both, and I never heard either speak of the other one way or another, the subject never having come up. I did see the two together when we were all three on some kind of panel involving Mars not long after the Viking Lander made it absolutely certain that the old view of Mars as a rather cold Earth with thin atmosphere were dead, and Ray’s Martian Chronicles went from far-out science fiction to wild fantasy, and Heinlein’s Red Planet went from juvenile SF to – well, I guess fantasy is as good a word as any. And most of the public’s interest in space travel and space colonies went away when it was proved that you couldn’t live on Mars or Venus, or anywhere else off Earth without a bubble to live in.

After that a lot of the Spacefaring Nation dream faded away, and it’s just now being revived again. At least I hope it is.

Dr. Pournelle, you wrote:

“Yes. Ray was too thoroughly entwined with the Hollywood establishment to be very open politically, and he talked politics very quietly and confidentially. He had a lot at stake.”

I recall at least one time Ray Bradbury was not quiet about a controversial political matter. He was guest on an LA talk radio show, back in the days talk shows had guests, often promoting a book or film, with interviews and listener questions. The controversy was the Jarvis-Gann initiative that, as Proposition 13, would limit/slash property taxes in California. Bradbury was guest on one of the top-rated LA talk radio shows, back in the days talk shows had guests (often promoting a book or film) with an interview and listener questions. He was one of those people who could just appear and keep a host and listening audience enthralled on all sorts of topics for an hour or two. Somehow (perhaps because he always spoke of his love for the libraries) Prop. 13 came up in the latter part of this particular hour. I don’t think I ever heard Ray more passionate and fiery — urgently speaking how it *must* be passed by the people. This was no matter of lofty ideas or dreams; our *liberty* was at stake! 1978 was my first state-wide election and I was already long-enthusiastic for Prop. 13. But it was wonderful to hear one of my literary heroes speak eloquently a voice that the usual toney West Side LA politics could not tolerate.

Pax et bonum, Steven+

The Rev. Steven P. Tibbetts, STS

Born in Hollywood, Playing in Peoria

Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, Peoria, Ill.

I read this at the Bradbury Memorial because it reminded me of Ray’s generosity toward newcomers. In the 70’s I was actively promoting Mote and Hammer, and sometimes found myself on some of those morning shows alongside Ray Bradbury. One would suppose that the usual outcome of that would be that Ray would get all the air time, but he would have none of that: if the host didn’t ask me to talk, then Ray would direct questions to me so that I couldn’t be ignored. I will always be grateful to him for that.

There is much discussion of the San Bernardino property adjustment scheme, and considerable speculation about what CERN actually found, all for another time. I am sure there will be coverage of the Bradbury memorial on the LASFS website.

View 731 Friday, July 06, 2012

The morning LA Times has a story about San Bernardino County studying a proposal to use eminent domain procedures to acquire underwater county homes, then negotiate new financing for the householders so that they can continue to live in their houses. The Times didn’t seem to know what to think about it, but when the Rush Limbaugh show came on his substitute certainly did: it is theft, he said. Robbery. Thievery.

The scheme is simple: the county seizes homes whose value is less than the mortgage. The county then pays the banks who own the mortgage the fair market value of the houses, and in essence holds the mortgage for all those living in the houses who are willing to pay for them at the reduced value and at the reduced payment rates. The county charges the current interest rates or perhaps a bit more to help finance the bureaucracy and the whole seizure-remortgage process (current proposals contemplate a minimum bureaucracy and private contracts for most of it). The banks who made the loans eat the loss, but they do get the current fair market value of the house. In the ideal case the householder has paid something as a down payment. One presumes that he ‘loses’ that in the sense that when this process begins the householder has zero equity, but since the refinance will be, presumably, a thirty year fixed interest mortgage, the householder begins to build equity from that moment on. He goes from negative equity to zero.

I am not at all sure this is theft. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but it’s worth discussing, and the more I think on it the better it sounds. Yes, the bank loses the difference between the amount loaned and the current fair market price. The question is, hasn’t the bank already lost that? The county gets the benefit of a householder owner who will keep the house from falling into desuetude. The county economy gets the backload of underwater domestic real estate cleared and a normalization of the housing market. The householder gets the house at the cost of all of his now-non-existent equity.

Do the benefits outweigh the intrusions? This is a county effort. Not state, and certainly not Federal. It is a bit of strain on the eminent domain precedents, but it’s not that great an extension of the power and presumably it could be written to make precise what it’s precedent for. Among other things it concerns owner-occupants, not properties occupied by renters, or abandoned places bought for a flip. I do note that even those might be discussed: what you don’t want is a lot of vacant housing turned into flophouses and drug centers.

It makes sense on the moral side. For good or ill the government did persuade people to get in over their heads. There has been considerable time since the housing bubble burst. I do not see this as encouraging more people to play flip games and inflate a new bubble. And the banks are not being robbed of anything they actually have, assuming that the fair market price assessments are honestly done.

I think if I were a San Bernardino County Commissioner I might be persuaded to vote for this; I’d certainly listen to the pitch.

Anyway that’s what I was thinking about on my morning walk.

Here is a mystery that has me puzzled, presuming that the facts are as stated. I’ve seen nothing else about it. Anyone know what’s going on?

http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/bizarre-chinas-eerie-ghost-cities-arise/ 

Eric is here and we’re going to get some cleanup work done this afternoon.

The Ray Bradbury Memorial LASFS meeting is tomorrow, Saturday July 7 at 2 PM at the LASFS clubhouse. Ray joined LASFS in the early days and has been a member ever since. A number of people will tell Ray Bradbury stories.

View 731 Thursday, July 05, 2012

I hope you had a good Fourth. We stayed home, joined by my son Alex and his wife, and by Larry and Marilyn Niven. Then today Niven and I went up the hill.

For reflections on the Fourth see https://statelymcdanielmanor.wordpress.com/ 

In digging for something else I came across this:

Ortega y Gasset’s “Revolt”

and the Problem of Mass Rule

E. Robert Statham, Jr.

http://www.mmisi.org/ma/46_03/statham.pdf

It is not a substitute for reading Ortega’s Revolt of the Masses which is one of those books that every civilized person should read as part of his education, but it is a good exposition on Ortega’s thesis. It will seem quite alien to many. Ortega, after all, said in answer to the charge that he was in favor of aristocracy said that he was guilty of much more than that: he believed that societies were societies to the extent that they were aristocratic, and if they ceased to be aristocratic they ceased to be societies. The Revolt of the Masses is why he holds that view. This essay in Modern Age – a journal founded by my mentor Russell Kirk. One of his collaborators in the founding of Modern Age was Kenneth Cole who was my professor at the University of Washington. If you’re looking for some heavy reading, this essay is worth your time. And if you haven’t read Ortega, put him on your list. You should.

It’s late, and it was a strenuous trip up the hill. I went to the LASFS meeting after dinner, and it’s very much time for bed now. More another time. LASFS will have a memorial meeting in memory of member Ray Bradbury this Saturday at 2 PM. A number of people who knew Ray will be there. The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society has a tradition: death will not release you, even if you die; which is why I say member rather than ‘former’ member. Ray would agree. I’ll tell a couple of my Bradbury stories. Others will tell even better ones.

Larry and Marilyn Niven, and alas my old shed needs painting worse than I thought. Sable is negotiating for anything Marilyn didn’t eat. Viking dogs don’t beg, they negotiate…

It got hot on the trail today. Sable sees a big handsome Husky Malamute coming up the hill.

I got this on another conference. Then a Pentagon contact told me his IT guy told him to check his computer

In case you haven’t heard, come Monday, the FBI is going to take down a DNS server safety net that could leave thousands (or more) U.S. internet users without internet access. This is not a hoax, it’s a real thing.
If you have not gotten your computers checked for the malware, please go to this link ASAP (http://www.dcwg.org) and do so. Otherwise, you risk being offline until you can get your computer fixed.

That got me asking my security experts about it, and Rick Hellewell has this to say:

True….somewhat overhyped, but true. See msnbc story here http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/malware-may-knock-thousands-internet-monday-864024

Facebook and Google users may have already gotten warnings. But that link is a good place to check; it’s run by the FBI.

..Rick…

Eric Pobirs expands:

From the descriptions I’ve read it’s very unlikely for an actively used machine to be infected and the user unaware. The malware was usually accompanied by other items that did obnoxious stuff like ad popups. I strongly suspect the estimated 350,000 infected systems are rarely used directly and things like monitoring systems checked by remote access or machines that have been left running and completely forgotten.

http://www.dns-ok.us/

This site, link provided by the DCWG.ORG site, appears to be a simple and painless test.

I wonder though, if instead of shutting everything down on the substitute DNS servers, if they should spend a day or so redirecting anything that talks to them from a web browser to a page saying YOU ARE INFECTED in big text and linking to the DCWG site. Perhaps they have and I just missed the mention.

Eric

View 731 Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Roberta has an appointment for an eye exam that includes dilation so I’ll have to drive her. This will be short.

The storm over Mr. Chief Justice Roberts decision continues. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding, and much talk of “silver linings” and others denouncing those who see “silver linings.” I am not privy to Mr. Roberts’ thinking, but I think those looking for silver linings are mistaken: this was not Mr. Roberts being the conservative Chief Justice standing in the way of the political departments as they rush the nation toward the end of the Constitutional Republic as we know it; this is Mr. Roberts in a cry of despair proclaiming that conservatives can no longer rely on the Supreme Court to save the people from the consequences of their political decisions.

What Mr. Roberts has seen is that a law so badly framed that it has internal contradictions and which mandates colossal new taxes while handing over nearly 20% of the national economy to federal bureaucrats has passed the House and Senate and has been signed by a President who purports to be an expert on Constitutional Law by dint of having been a lecturer on the subject at the University of Chicago as well as the President of the Harvard Law Review; and despite the obvious defects of this law, four Justices were eager to approve it. The whole course of the United States turns on the survival of five men. If one of them goes, so does the Constitution.

The old model of Congress messing with the Constitution and the Court trying to save it no longer works. We have gone too far down the road to serfdom, and if we continue there will be no turning back. The Courts cannot perpetually resist the political departments. If the Constitutionalists among us cannot regain control of the political branches, what we know as the Constitution of 1789 will be gone, irretrievably gone; it takes only one more liberal Justice.

Whereupon Mr. Roberts has thrown this question to the people. Is this the way you want to go? If so, confirm those who posed it. If not, turn them out. You have one more election to accomplish this. If Mr. Obama has four more years, the chances are good that he will be able to add one more to the Court, and there will be no turning back.

One can argue that this is a political strategic decision and it is not his to make. He would argue that it is his task to save the Constitution and this is the only way he knows that will accomplish that. Turn out the makers of this act which would march the United States down the path to federal control of everything, and do it while there is yet time to do so; or face the fact that the Court can no longer protect you from political consequences of your actions. If you want an entitlement state, here is your chance; if you want to reverse this course and move away from entitlements, here is your chance. And, incidentally, what we have is 2700 pages of bad law, passed by ideologues who had not read it and could not have known how bad it is, and approved by four Justices who haven’t read it either. If they’ll approve this they’ll approve anything. If you give Mr. Obama the chance he will add yet another to their number.

Mr. Roberts has proclaimed a reality. He might have gone with the conservative block and thrown the law out, thus making this election one of populism vs. the courts – something the liberals were preparing for. Now the issue is clear. This is a referendum on the entitlement state march down the Road to Serfdom. He may well have been wrong to do this, but it is what he has done.

If Mr. Obama wins this election he will have won and Obamacare will be implemented.

Ms. Pelosi told us that we had to pass the Bill so that we could find out what’s in it. We have done so. Now we know. And now that we know, we have a chance to reject it.

I have mail from readers who say that since Romney is unsatisfactory, they will vote Libertarian. TRhat is certainly an option.

I note that on the 1912 election President William Howard Taft, who took office as the designated successor to Theodore Roosevelt, failed of reelection because Roosevelt found him unsatisfactory and ran against him as the Progressive (“Bull Moose”) candidate. The result was predictable, the election of Woodrow Wilson. Wilson won a second term on the platform of “he kept us out of the War”, meaning The Great War, which after American entry under Wilson was called the World War.

I can well understand the frustrations of those who find Romney unsatisfactory. He was not my candidate. On the other hand, most of the people I know including myself find it a lot easier to gain influence and even power within the Republican Party rather than the Democrat party.  We do not live in a perfect world. In this real world, either Romney or Obama will become President and will appoint at least one Justice of the Supreme Court. Neither of those potential winners would be my first or even tenth choice to be President; but there is a lot more than a dime’s worth of difference between them.

You wrote:

"Ms. Pelosi told us that we had to pass the Bill so that w could find out what’s in it."

Perhaps you should read her complete remarks, so that you understand the context of the statement. It’s obvious to anyone who isn’t vested in taking her comments out of context that she was referring to the fact that given all the manufactured controversy, the only way The American People will find out what’s in the bill is when it’s implemented.

Of course, those with their own agendas won’t bother to actually review her remarks in their totality, because when it’s out of context and intentionally misconstrued, it makes a hell of a soundbite.

Which, of course, shows the validity of her point regarding the manufactured controversy and the reality.

M

But in fact we did have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it. And one of the things we find is that it fails to authorize funding of some of its own key elements: it was rushed into law defects and all. And I suspect that neither you nor anyone else believes that Ms. Pelosi actually read the bill that she conducted through the House. Indeed I would wager that not one of those who voted for that bill had actually read it. Twenty seven hundred pages is a lot of reading, and this was done by a lame duck Congress and even then has to use arcane parliamentary maneuvers to get it passed before that Congress was no more.  Yes: we had to pass the bill in order to find out what is in it. And what we are finding is not at all pleasant.

The simplest procedure is to repeal it, every bit of it, and then start over – assuming that there is any sentiment for a new national health bill at all.  The Clintons lost their Congressional majority on this issue, but Mr. Clinton was clever enough to disassociate himself from it in the election of 1996; and the Republicans were kind enough to run Bob Dole, probably the only man Clinton could beat. Romney is not Dole. Romney is more Mormon than Establishment.

But it is hardly unfair to say that the bill had to be passed in order to find out what was in it. No one knew what was in it when it was passed, and many are just finding out some of it now.