Category Archives: View

View 705 Saturday, December 17, 2011

I spent most of the day moping about thinking of scenes, a bit of time on administrative matters, and then took Roberta out on a date, a nice dinner in a steak house and a movie, IN TIME, I’ve been distracted lately, and I didn’t pay much attention to the trailers for IN TIME on the TV, but as soon as the movie started I wondered if there would be credits for Harlan Ellison and his “Repent, Harlequin, Said the TickTock Man.” On coming home I found on line that Harlan had initiated a law suit, but after watching the picture, settled the suit, so far as I can see without any claims. One of these days I’ll ask Harlan why: it would seem clear to me that under Writers Guild rules Harlan has some claim, at the very least to credit for some ideas in the picture.

Anyway, there was a period in the picture when I thought I didn’t like it, but I got past that and was able to enjoy the story and the acting. As is usual for me I was over-analytic. My main criticism of stories of this kind in which the super rich control everything is that they never have trouble finding loyal minions. There never was a mad scientist who didn’t have a crew of henchmen who followed every stupid order given, and the Timekeeper – TickTockMan – is very loyal to the system. He is clearly derived from Victor Hugo’s Javert more than Harlan’s TickTockMan, but I would be willing to argue the case that Harlan deserves partial credit for the character as well as the Timekeeper title and position. In any event, the social system requires police loyal to it, and there are no obvious reasons for their loyalty given in the film. There seldom is in any of those movies: the mad scientist always has loyal henchmen, and fanatic servants, and enormous resources, but it always risking all that for more on some hare-brained scheme. That doesn’t happen here, but the ostentatious discrepancy between the very rich and everyone else – including their hotel clerks, bodyguards, valets, secretaries – leaves one wondering why the only people with weapons generally employ them in the service of their masters.

But enough quibbling. I enjoyed the movie.

And I’m still moping about collecting scenes for Anvil.

I had this amusing exchange of mail:

Your words are finding a wide audience, and an alternative to the Dean Drive –

Jerry –

When I sent my sister a link to your teleporting cat story, she found that the story had already started traveling around the Interwebs. Since the person who reposted it did not include a link to your site, I took the liberty of adding a link and vouching for your character. If you wish to see it, here is a link to that exchange: http://texasfishingforum.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/6941218/A_simple_microgravity_experime

My working theory about the cat’s ability to teleport is that it simply willed itself in the direction of the safe harbor (the Captain’s chest). Based on that theory, I have developed a credible alternative to the Dean Drive. By the way, my wife said I shouldn’t share the following idea with you because it would end up in one of your stories. I doubt that very much, but if it should happen, you may have it with my blessings. But if you patent an actual working mechanism or a derivative, I get a cut of the royalties and my name goes on the patent with yours. <grin>

Proof of Concept Experiment Design for Dean Drive Alternative: Build a cradle that has at one end a chair for the astronaut/sacrificial victim, and at the other a simple framework that supports a hook. Distance from the couch should be slightly more than double the astronaut’s arms reach. The cradle should be designed to support a significant amount of compression before failing gracefully. (In other words, it should bend under excessive load and not snap off.)

Install the cradle into a vessel, anchoring firmly onto the strongest structural framework available. Place the vessel into at least Low Earth Orbit so microgravity is available. Along with the cradle, launch the astronaut, a cat, and a harness to suspend the cat from the hook at the driving end of the cradle. I suggest placing the cradle relatively near sick bay, or at least a first aid kit for ease of treating any injuries sustained by the astronaut. The cradle should preferably be aligned along the overall vessel’s central axis of mass. Again, care should be taken to ensure that the cradle is firmly mounted to the vessel’s strongest internal framework.

Orient the vehicle so the driving (cat) end of the cradle is pointed AWAY from the intended post-cat-activation direction of flight. Using the vessel’s ordinary means of propulsion (assumed for this experiment to be either a rocket, ion thruster, or similar reaction engine), place the vessel under a sufficient amount of acceleration that the cat does not experience microgravity. This initial baseline acceleration should be along the line between the astronaut station and the cat station, towards the cat.

Place the astronaut in the chair and the cat in the harness. While the astronaut holds the cat at arms’ length, attach the hook to the cat’s harness and inspect all fastenings for proper attachment and locking. This completes assembly of the Feline Drive unit.

Once all other flight personnel have fastened themselves into their seats and all safety checks are complete, turn off the vessel’s ordinary propulsion system. Once acceleration ceases, take inertial readings to verify velocity and direction, then instruct the astronaut to release the cat and move his/her arms into a rest position in the chair. (Care should be taken that the release of the cat does not impart to the cat any additional thrust vectors. If the cat rebounds into the hook area of the cat station, it may consider that area to be a safe harbor, negating the purpose of the experiment.) If the experiment design is followed adequately, the cat will be dangling by the harness in microgravity.

Shortly after the cat recognizes that it is floating, the designer predicts that the cat will identify the astronaut’s chest as a desired landing zone (either from a desire for safety or a desire for revenge). Once this identification is made, the cat is expected to accelerate itself toward the astronaut’s chest at maximum speed by main force of will. The Feline Drive’s hook and harness will transfer the cat’s own acceleration to the drive unit’s mountings to the vessel’s framework, which in turn will effect the acceleration of the vessel. This acceleration should be readily detectible by the inertial sensors.

If this initial experiment is successful, a variety of further experiments should be performed to determine how much acceleration a Feline Drive can produce and for what length of time, whether multiple Feline Drive units operating simultaneously can increase acceleration, and whether other factors can increase acceleration. This last alternative presents an interesting possibility for an additional experiment that could validate the Feline Drive, if the initial experiment fails.

For this alternative experiment, add an additional station that extends the cradle forward from the cat hook station. In the new station, affix a hook and a large dog in a harness. (Sable might be interested in applying for the job.) Place a removable blind between the dog station and the cat station. (Care should be taken to ensure that the cat never sees the dog.) If the initial exposure to microgravity does not cause the cat to will itself into acceleration, the astronaut pulls a control that drops the barrier between the dog station and the cat station. (Care should be taken to ensure that the cat sees the astronaut take the action that drops the barrier.) The sudden appearance of the dog should cause the cat to consider the astronaut as both safe harbor (away from the dog) and as an essential target for revenge, thus maximizing the cat’s focus of will to move toward the astronaut. In short, the astronaut causing the sudden appearance of the dog is expected to crystallize the cat’s attitude into the incontrovertible belief that, in microgravity, "The enemy’s chest is down."

Once the Feline Drive concept is validated, it is predicted that additional experimentation can be designed that will uncover the principles underlying the force of will. Further research along those lines should determine whether it is possible to produce an inorganic Feline Drive equivalent.

–Gary P.

I replied “You’re quite mad, aren’t you?”

To which he replied

Interesting question. If I were truly mad, how would I know?

Fortunately you’re not the first to wonder that about me. Been tested.

Not mad. Don’t even have to take meds. Well, not for *that* sort of thing at least. I just work as a government contractor in IT, so I have a lot of creativity that doesn’t get used at work. I spend the bulk of my time helping pave the way for replacing a mission-critical, absolutely essential, enterprise data collection app that is written in FoxPro 2.6 for DOS. And once we get the data out of the DBFs and into a real database (SQL Server 2000, running on a Win2K server), the architect over that side of things determined many years ago that we would not have SQL Server enforce our primary key/foreign key relationships because that would slow things down too much. Better to do all referential integrity in the code, after all. So we have around 500 tables with a total of 12 foreign key relationships defined in the DB, which all exist within the scope of 5 tables. All of the other hundreds of relationships that exist are maintained solely in code. Or they’re supposed to. I’m not aware that we actually have any way to test that assumption.

I enjoy thinking through these kinds of intellectual thought experiments. The way I figure it is, I will either come up with a brilliant idea that makes me a fortune, or else I’ll win an Ig Noble.

Or become a character in a Discworld novel. And none of those seem like really bad outcomes. After all, I work as a government contractor in IT. Occasionally these kind of flashes of twisted inspiration have resulted in useful ideas that have been implemented at work. But none of them have involved felines.

So I gather that you don’t think the Feline Drive would work? Or were your objections based more on opposition to gratuitous cruelty to astronauts? I suppose that would be valid. Perhaps we could design around that (flak vest or some such), but I am concerned that anything that might cause a cat to think its desire for revenge could be thwarted puts the whole project at risk. After all, I’ve never met anything that can take a more creative approach to revenge than a cat, and they generally seem willing to take the long view towards getting it. Since we want the cat to use its unorthodox locomotion ability, we would not want to give the cat any idea that it would not be able to cause maximum harm at that instant, otherwise it might put off attaching itself to the astronaut.

I realized while writing this that while you said "teleporting" I had jumped to the conclusion that it was most likely to be a reactionless drive rather than teleporting. I have seen cats and dogs who levitate onto the furniture. They always jumped, but never seemed to put enough effort into it to achieve that altitude they reached. One cat of my acquaintance also never seemed to have the velocity he needed to reach that altitude. I never saw him and his brother both jump onto something at the same time so I had no external velocity to gauge against, but he *always* looked like he was moving a little too slowly for the altitude he needed to reach. Either way, the experiment I outlined would identify if the cat was moving by means of teleportation or a reactionless drive. If teleportation, the cat would dematerialize from inside the harness and re-materialize on the astronaut’s chest.

Perhaps I should take advantage of the rest of the weekend to write up the Feline Drive idea in a more formal framework and see if I can’t bag that Ig Nobel after all.

Now, about the cat flight film. If it was recorded as part of an Air Force-funded flight, the film is likely to have been archived somewhere and that means it could be acquired through an FOIA request.

Or possibly one of the other members of the Human Factors staff (or their successors) would have it. If you still have any contacts in that area, perhaps they might have a clue? I think you could be assured of an instant viral video hit. I could think about it for a while and try to come up with an angle for capitalizing on that, but I don’t know how well any such ideas might be received. <grin>

–Gary

I can only say that I have tried to find a copy of that film, and haven’t been able to do it. I last saw it at a conference at Randolph Field probably thirty years ago. It was made about fifty years ago, and I don’t know that more than one copy was ever made.

I agree that “reactionless drive” may be a more inclusive description of the cat’s motive power than teleportation. Whatever allowed it to travel, claws extended, from midair in the cockpit to the chest of the pilot is not at all visible, and this would not be the direction we would have predicted an inanimate object would go at that phase of the flight.

I haven’t any firm opinion on the motivation of the cat. I do know that no pilot who has seen that film has ever been interested in replicating the experiment.

View 705 Friday, December 16, 2011

I was up late finishing the proofreading of STARSWARM, which I got off to my agent; it was pretty clean, and with luck it will be up as a kindle book early next week.

I am now off to Niven’s for consultation on Anvil, which is moving along as I think of ways to tell a very complex story about reform and redemption. Structure of a novel like this is tricky.

I’ll try to catch up shortly. But mostly I’m in fiction mode just now.

The debate went well last night. All the candidates looked good. They’ve stopped bruising each other and are beginning to talk about what to do to get this country out of the mess we are in. Any one of them would be a better president than the one we have.

There is clearly a need to reform the judicial system. It has to be done carefully: there is no more delicate issue. Tinkering with the judicial system and the rule of law must be done carefully and with reluctance: one approaches the defects of one’s country as you would the wounds of a father, not with joy but with sorrow and great care. We don’t want to gut the courts, nor reduce their power in their proper domains; but the courts have done an Iron Law expansion into areas and jurisdictions they must not have. An example is the Warren Court declaring that the State Senates of essentially all the states had been unconstitutional for the entire period of the Republic: in other words that the nation that adopted the constitutional amendments was itself unconstitutional. That absurdity should have been met by Congress with stern measures. Instead, the structure of state government with checks and balances was changed from republic to democracy, Los Angeles was now free to despoil northern California of its water, and all the political balances built over the decades were thrown out in a flurry of “democracy.”

There were other such radical changes, and they continue. Yet the basic structure of the Republic can’t be lost in the efforts to restore the balances of the Republic.  It is good to see that these matters are now up for debate. It is better that an historian participates in them.

And now I have got to get out of here to work.

From an interview by Newt Gingrich in the New York Times.

"I asked the speaker if he believed in space aliens. “It’s mathematically
plausible,” he replied, joking that he hoped a friend who had written about
space-traveling pachyderms was prescient, to speed up Republican
colonization of outer space."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/opinion/dowd-honeymoons-in-space.html?ref=opinion&gwh=0CE53840E8E9E715760DD7CF66BEC6ED

View 705 Thursday, December 15, 2011

My agent has sent me the Kindle edition of STARSWARM for proofreading and I would like to have it up and available on Amazon before Christmas, so I am doing that now. I find that formatting is tricky, particularly in that book which uses font types and styles as part of the reader experience. I liked Starswarm a lot and it still holds up, both as a juvenile and for adults. At least I think so.

The kindle edition will have the non-fiction introduction that was dropped in the paperback editions. It should be up in a week or so.

And I am still trying to catch up. It’s raining outside. I’m still thinking about saving the country (well, in a novel, Anvil). And I am getting some work done.

There’s new mail, all interesting.

From an interview by Newt Gingrich in the New York Times.

"I asked the speaker if he believed in space aliens. “It’s mathematically
plausible,” he replied, joking that he hoped a friend who had written about
space-traveling pachyderms was prescient, to speed up Republican
colonization of outer space."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/opinion/dowd-honeymoons-in-space.html?ref=opinion&gwh=0CE53840E8E9E715760DD7CF66BEC6ED

View 705 Wednesday, December 14, 2011

I’m behind as usual. I did want to call attention to “A Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism” (link) by Gore and Blood. It may be that I am losing my faculties, but I at first I did not comprehend it as a serious work. It seemed like a parody, especially when I saw that the authors were Gore and Blood, but apparently it is quite serious.

It is, in fact, a fairly good if dense statement of the liberal socialist view of the future, a command economy with all the results and goals set by central experts rather than consumers, owners, and the market. Private ownership remains, but it is managed by the smart people at the center. The central premises here are almost indistinguishable from peace time fascism as put forth by Mussolini. Benito Mussolini was a life long socialist who believed in industrial efficiency and growth, and given the Italian state and culture when he came to power was able to make some spectacular gains. He not only made the trains run on time, but he also built the railroads and airports. If you look closely at the cornerstone of Da Vinci airport outside Rome, or most of the better train stations, you’ll find a bronze plaque proclaiming this a work of Victor Emmanuel II, Rex, and Benito Mussolini, Duce. Mussolini meant well for the working people of Italy, and while he was ruthless in suppressing dissent, he was really not so much more so than many in the left liberal community have been in suppressing dissent in science and academia.

Of course Blood and Gore have different central goals from Italian Fascism, and unlike Mussolini don’t seem to worry about productivity and efficiency; but then Mussolini wanted efficiency so that he would have the goods to distribute. He was a socialist, after all. He also got sidetracked by visions of the former glory that was Rome, and experimented with Imperialism in Libya and Somalia and Ethiopia, whereas Blood and Gore have different ultimate goals.

Like Mussolini, Blood and Gore set their goals independent of the consumer and the market; they after all are the Enlightened, and it would be silly to consult the Benighted about such complex matters; even Blood and Gore don’t understand climate science, but they have their teams of scientists who do, and who will frequently explain what must be done and what it will cost. Blood is enough of an economist to describe regulatory measures to manipulate the values of the enterprises whose operations he wants to control, and by fiat will make pension obligations, which the market considers as liabilities, actual assets which add to the value of the company. At least I think that’s what they mean:

Because ESG metrics directly affect companies’ long-term value, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, foundations and the like—investors with long-term liabilities—should include these metrics as an essential aspect of valuation and investment strategy. Sustainable capitalism requires investors to be good investors, to fully understand the companies they invest in and to believe in their long-term value and potential.

I conclude that this Gore and Blood essay is far from being intended as a joke; it’s a picture of the future they want to make, a future that has no place for Schumpeter’s creative destruction. Of course Schumpeter had a rather gloomy picture of the future:

“ Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can.” Thus opens Schumpeter’s prologue to a section of his 1942 book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. One might think, on the basis of the quote, that Schumpeter was a Marxist. But the analysis that led Schumpeter to his conclusion differed totally from Karl Marx’s. Marx believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its enemies (the proletariat), whom capitalism had purportedly exploited, and he relished the prospect. Schumpeter believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its successes, that it would spawn a large intellectual class that made its living by attacking the very bourgeois system of private property and freedom so necessary for the intellectual class’s existence. And unlike Marx, Schumpeter did not relish the destruction of capitalism. “If a doctor predicts that his patient will die presently,” he wrote, “this does not mean that he desires it.” http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Schumpeter.html

What Blood and Gore prescribe is in fact the end of capitalism as it has been understood. The difference between them and Schumpeter is that Gore and Blood desire the end of capitalism without understanding what capitalism is, while Schumpeter understood it perfectly.

Another who understood capitalism described where thoughts like those of Blood and Gore had already taken much of the world before 1942 and where it was now taking them: Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, published in Britain and then the United States before World War II was over showed just what would happen if the regulatory state had its way.

Once again I remind you that freedom is not free, free men are not equal, and equal men are not free. But then you knew that.

= = = =

[NOTE: Italian fascism was not officially anti-Semitic until the alliance with Hitler. The Fascist State had a number of high ranking Jewish officials in its hierarchy, including the Minister of Information (who was also at one time Mussolini’s mistress).]

And now it’s lunch time.

President Obama: "Well, what we’re going to have to do is continue to make progress on the economy over the next several months. And where Congress is not willing to act, we’re going to go ahead and do it ourselves. But it would be nice if we could get a little bit of help from Capitol Hill."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/12/14/obama_where_congress_is_not_willing_to_act_were_going_to_go_ahead_and_do_it_ourselves.html

The usual solution to that sort of problem has been to replace the legislature, or “reform” its election laws to make the legislature more democratic. In Italy it led to the Grand Council of Fasces.

Subj: If Congress does not act, I will act – Obama channeling FDR

That bit from Obama reminded me of a Bonapartist piece by FDR, ordering the Congress to pass anti-inflation legislation, that James Burnham quoted in _The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom_:

[begin quote]

I ask the Congress to take this action by the first of October. Inaction on your part by that date will leave me with an inescapable responsibility to the people of the country to see to it that the war effort is no longer imperiled by threat of domestic chaos. In the event that the Congress should fail to act, and act adequately, I shall accept the responsibility, and I will act. At the same time that farm prices are stabilized, wages can and will be stabilized also. This I will do.

… When the war is won, the powers under which I act automatically revert to the people — to whom they belong.

[end quote]

Of course, since the Emergency under which Obama is acting will never end — *can* never end — Obama will not have to worry about his powers eventually reverting to the people.

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Limits of forecasting

TTAWA — Two top U.S. hurricane forecasters, famous across Deep South hurricane country, are quitting the practice of making a seasonal forecast in December because it doesn’t work.

William Gray and Phil Klotzbach say a look back shows their past 20 years of forecasts had no predictive value.

The two scientists from Colorado State University will still discuss different probabilities of hurricane seasons in December. But the shift signals how far humans are, even with supercomputers, from truly knowing what our weather will do in the long run.

Colorado State has been known for decades for forecasts of how many named storms and hurricanes can be expected each official hurricane season (which runs from June to November.)

Last week, the pair made this announcement:

“We are discontinuing our early December quantitative hurricane forecast for the next year … Our early December Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts of the last 20 years have not shown real-time forecast skill even though the hindcast studies on which they were based had considerable skill.”

The two will still make the traditional forecasts closer to hurricane season.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly said they were stopping all forecasts.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Hurricane+experts+admit+they+predict+hurricanes+early+December+forecasts+unreliable/5847032/story.html#ixzz1gWm5kgH5

Tom Donlan

Which needs no real comment. The weather and climate are too complex for our models. That may not always be true, but it’s true enough now.  I gather that the Alps are having unusual weather now. Somewhere there is always a place with unusual weather.  And Europe is still nowhere near as warm as it was before 1300.