Category Archives: View

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, April 26, 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 been in manic phase, turning out fiction for Call of Cthulhu – not a Lovecraft parody, but the working title of the third book in the Avalon series about the first interstellar colony, which Larry Niven, Steve Barnes, and I are working on. We have 20,000 words and a fairly detailed synopsis, and soon enough we’ll be ready to send a proposal to our agent for circulation to publishers. Tomorrow we have a lunch conference. I’ve done a lot with the outline as well as a few thousand words of actual scenes. Wore myself out, I did.

I seem to have been nominated for a Hugo. “Best Editor, Short Form”. The only work mentioned for the year 2015 is There Will Be War, Volume Ten” released in November. It is of course a continuation of the There Will Be War series which appeared in the 1980’s and early 90’s, of which the first four volumes were recreated with a new preface during 2015; the rest are scheduled to come out in the next couple of years. I’ve edited a lot of anthologies, starting with 2020 Vision in 1973 (I think it will come out in reprint with new a introduction and afterword’s by the surviving authors next year. I did a series of anthologies with Jim Baen that was pretty popular, and one-off anthologies like Black Holes and The Survival of Freedom, amounting to more than twenty over the years, but this is the first time anyone has ever nominated me for an editing Hugo – and actually the first time I ever thought of it myself.

When I first started in this racket, Best Editor Hugo usually meant one for the current editor of Analog or Galaxy. That spread around over the years, but it meant Editor in the sense of someone employed with the title of Editor, not a working writer who put together anthologies, sometimes for a lark.

I used to get Hugo nominations all the time in my early days, but I never won. My Black Holes story came close, but I lost to Niven’s “Hole Man”. Ursula LeGuin beat me for novella. There were others. Our collaborations routinely got nominated, but again usually came second, so at one point I was irked enough to say “Money will get you through times of no Hugo’s much better than Hugo’s will get you through times of no money,” and put whatever promotion efforts I had time for into afternoon and late night talk radio shows and stuff like that. Which worked for sales, but not for Hugo awards. I’m unlikely to get this one – I’m a good editor but that’s hardly my primary occupation – but I admit I’d like to. I was already going to Kansas City this August, so I’ll be there, but I doubt there’s much need to write a thank you speech.

The Republican Establishment, and some of the anti-establishment people I have considerable respect for, are in panic mode as Trump moves closer to inevitable First Ballot Nomination. It’s easy to see why the Establishment is terrified. Then there are the others.

1. He can’t beat Hillary. Doesn’t he know that? The media are playing along with him now, but they hate him, and the instant he’s nominated they will turn on him with a vengeance.

A few months ago it was considered impossible for Mr. Trump to be the nominee. He’d drop out soon enough. Didn’t he realize it was impossible? Yet, here he is. As to the media, does anyone believe that Trump doesn’t know they hate him? And even if he were that naïve, is everyone around him also that stupid? It is not rational to think Mr. Trump can be astonished at the notion that he is not popular with the drive by media.

He has already attracted a significant number of Democrats to his camp. Mostly white working class, who feel betrayed by the Democrat machines but certainly were not going to turn to Wall Street and the Republican Country Club establishment for relief. They want jobs, not free stuff; domestic tranquility, not diversity schemes; some expectation of being important again as they were in the long dead times after World War II. They don’t trust Hillary. They don’t trust the Country Club. They have discovered that the Democrat Establishment has expelled the New Democrats who elected and reelected Bill Clinton, and Hillary has gone over to buying their dignity with free stuff. She doesn’t care.  Bill maybe was once one of them, but she never was.

It may be a close race, but then they said Reagan was just an actor, and that his would be impossible. Better Establishment candidate Gerry Ford… .

2. He’s no conservative.

No. He’s not. He accepts the conservative alternative to many problems, but he’s not an ideological anything. He’s a pragmatic populist. I will have to write more about the differences between Populism, Conservatism, and Democracy, but not today; I’m running out of time.

I will remind you that the one phrase nearly every one of the Founders in Philadelphia were agreed on was “There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.” They founded a Republic, not a democracy, a nation of states that did not agree on many matters, but were determined to preserve their own way of life.

Despair is a Sin

I just had an important discussion with some folks and I decided to undercut their positions and say that I was no longer talking about the subject but the principles underlying it and I asked them if they thought they couldn’t make it better? And then I said despair is a sin. Now I understand what you mean and I thank you for repeating that to me over and over again so that now I can understand it. Despair is a sin, and more descriptively, it is a semantic blockage.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Our Webmaster reports:

Malware via Advertising

DANGER, WIL ROBINSON !!!
I’ve been getting these via what appears to be a ad-delivered malware attack. They have looked like Flash updates before, but today’s was a bogus/malwared FireFox update.

The domain was registered today, so is bogus. Screenshot below (IP address and location blanked)

The usual warning: although updates a good (and recommended), make sure that you get them from a reliable source. Don’t click on popups.

…Rick….

 

IGNORE this message from me. Message follows:

I did not send this – to myself or anyone else. I have never asked for confirmation of subscriptions. Be warned.

From: Chaos Manor – Jerry Pournell [mailto:jerryp@jerrypournelle.com]
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 2:20 PM
To: Chaos Manor – Jerry Pournelle
Subject: Subscription confirmation

Chaos Manor – Jerry Pournelle Subscription confirmation To finish your subscription, you need to confirm your e-mail address here. If you can’t click the link above, copy and paste this url into your browser: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor?simpleSubscribe=1&a=s&sb=c609868c97a805efca4d32cac1d7cf1e049fb27a&i=183   Here from the Website Master is why you ignore it: Dr. P. I noticed just after the malware warning your warning about subscription verifications. You state that you don’t send out those. The actual fact is that those notification are valid. .There is a ‘subscription’ signup on Chaos Manor (and Chaos Manor Reviews) that will notify subscribers of a new post on either site. When you sign up, you get a confirmation mail (to ensure that it was actually you that subscribed), which has to be clicked to activate the subscription. After verification, the subscriber will get email notice of new content on the sites. This is different from what you were thinking of — your paid subscriptions. The email notice that you warned about is actually valid, and should not be ignored, if the subscriber wants to be notified of new content.. …Rick…

What we have here us a failure of communication. Sorry

 

 

Mini Ice Age AD536-660, New Sci 13 Feb, p. 18

Procopius notes that around 539 AD

“At that time also the comet appeared, at first about as long as a tall man, but later much larger. And the end of it was toward the west and its beginning toward the east, and it followed behind the sun itself. For the sun was in Capricorn and it was in Sagittarius. And some called it “the swordfish” because it was of goodly length and very sharp at the point, and others called it “the bearded star”; it was seen for more than forty days.”
It is likely that this is the same comet that Gibbon talks about in his Decline and fall of the Roman Empire
“Eight years afterward [comet Halley’s 530 AD apparition], while the sun was in Capricorn, another comet appeared to follow in the Sagittary:  the size was gradually increasing; the head was in the east, the tail in the west, and it remained visible for 40 days”
Procopius’s description above implies to me an observed comet with an anti-tail.  Also, Procopius gives us some information of when the comet was seen. He tells us that the sun was in Capricorn.  The date when this occurred during the writing of Procopius was the last few days of December, and the first three weeks of January.  It appearing in Sagittarius at this time may tie in well with the Chinese account of it being seen in S. Dipper?  So it is possible that we have two accounts of the same comet.  If this is the case then Gibbon seems to be out by a year. 

In his list of comets, Ho gives comets in the years 530 (Halley), 533, 535, 537, 539(the above comet) and 541.  If these comets were noticed by many people then we can see how perhaps the comets of 535 and 539 may have been remembered as harbingers for the following volcanically induced climatic events.  Indeed, the two comets of 537 and 541 which appeared during the climatic events may have also been viewed as ill omens. The following is purely speculative, but to an ignorant and/or superstitious population, they may have viewed the comets as a cause of the climatic events, not knowing that distant volcanoes were to blame.  Indeed, while the educated and perhaps more rational/sober may have recorded what they seen as heavenly events, the general populace may only have had stories of myth and legend to fall back upon to try to understand what was happening at the time?

Jonny

It has been colder (4^th and 5^th Century; Little Ice Age) and warmer (Roman Warm, Viking Era) than now in historical times, all well before the Industrial Revolution. The hockey stick is a contrived falsehood.

This was actually sent in February. It is relevant today.

Cell phone security,

Jerry

The FBI wants Apple to divulge its security by creating a back door. Apple would do well to create a subsidiary in, say, Japan or Singapore to write its OS – or at least to convert the output of its Silicon Valley engineers to final code. US legal people often engage in extra-territoriality, but locating it in a state where the government can stand up to bullies is required.

The alternative is to see sales leak to Samsung, Nokia and other non-US companies. I hope the logic is clear: no one will trust US products, and they will buy from elsewhere. It’s a slippery slope: dead terrorists, live terrorists, purveyors of child porn, kidnappers . . . child custody cases, etc. It would be like Men in Black, where all the aliens were abandoning the planet because we had a Bug.

Ed

‘Wouldn’t it be simpler for the Air Force just to blow up Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral launch sites?’

<http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/exposed-us-air-forces-war-destroy-americas-space-industry-15925>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

College men and women obsolete categories

Dear Jerry:
We read today in “The Chronicle of Higher Education” that student categories of male and female are to be superseded on college application forms.
The prospective students will still be asked to state their “sex assigned at birth.” It remains unspecified as to just who it is who has the authority to assign sex at birth to a prospective college student or whether the applicant will have to provide documentary evidence of that assignment. I can see this becoming a matter of dispute. Also it is unclear whether stating “sex assigned at birth” is optional or required.
Once the touchy business of sex assignment at birth is out of the way, the students themselves will get to specify their gender identities without all the confusion of considering physical or biochemical evidence.

From the Chronicle:

Common Application to Change Gender-Identity Options

[Updated (4/26/2016, 12:01 a.m.) with news of the Universal College Application.]
Starting this summer, students who use the Common Application will be asked to state their “sex assigned at birth.” There also will be an optional free-response text field in which applicants may describe their gender identity.
Those changes, announced on Monday by the Common Application’s leadership, follow calls from students and advocates to change how the standardized application form asks about gender. Currently, applicants are required to choose “male” or “female.” The new prompts are meant to help students express themselves in a way they feel most comfortable with, said Aba Blankson, a spokeswoman for the Common Application: “The feedback from our members and advisory committees has been consistent that, yep, this is the time, this is the right way to go.”
Continued at
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/common-application-to-change-gender-identity-options/110674
Best regards,
–Harry M.

Is comment needed? The Republican Establishment holds both Houses of Congress, doesn’t it? Is this the Will of the People?

finally an Ah Shixit button for pilots

http://www.popsci.com/xavion-ipad-app-can-make-emergency-airplane-landing-autopilot?src=offramp&loc=region-3&lnk=img

Very, very, cool.

-- 

Phil Tharp

New Plant Designed to Push GE Further Into Digital (journal)

It sure ain’t. It also shows that manufacturing jobs are not coming back.  Meet Mr. Robot, his co-worker Miss 3D printer  and their dedicated process control counter parts. It’s really cool. I just don’t know what we will do with the IQ 100 types.

Phil Tharp

On 4/24/16 4:49 PM, Jerry Pournelle wrote:

It sure ain’t Chevrolet…

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

New Plant Designed to Push GE Further Into Digital

• (journal)

• By 
• Angus Loten
• .

A new incubator-like facility, to be launched Friday, will allow General Electric Co.GE -1.39% to test real-world applications of big data, the Internet of Things, and a range of IT tools in the industrial manufacturing process, the company said.

Advanced Manufacturing Works, a 125,000-square-foot facility housed within the company’s sprawling Greenville, S.C., industrial complex, is equipped to produce working gas turbines, jet engines, wind-turbine blades and other power-industry parts and products.

But it also includes advanced capabilities to apply big data, IoT, 3-D printing, automation and robotics to that process. The $73 million facility is operated by GE Power, the company’s power-generation unit.

Through digital technologies, it seeks to create streams of data linking industrial processes and systems that often are isolated at more traditional manufacturing plants. GE calls the stream a “Digital Thread.”

The goal is to develop tools to more quickly adjust to input from across the supply chain and other external sources, use insights drawn from the data to fine-tune production on the fly, and get new parts and products to market faster, GE Power Chief Information Officer Johnson told CIO Journal.

He said it can be difficult to insert new technologies into the traditional manufacturing process without slowing down or even shutting off production. Industrial plant managers and engineers can spend days or even weeks analyzing data in a spreadsheet before initiating any changes. In the meantime, the plant keeps churning out faulty parts, or stays idle, Mr. Johnson said.

To address this issue, the new facility will act as a testing ground for applying data instantly, through automated processes, to make those changes in real-time, using streams of data to create a “digital feedback loop,” he said: “A true digital loop is about seeing data and using that to make adjustments to the process without human intervention. That’s the next stage” of IoT, he added.

To further speed up the process, the facility will use 3-D printing and 3-D modeling to create rapid, intricate prototypes for parts and products, to share quickly with customers along the supply chain.

Digitized processes that test successfully will be applied at the company’s main manufacturing plants, GE Power CEO Steve Bolze told CIO Journal.

“We can innovate offline and introduce these technologies into one of GE’s largest manufacturing facilities,” Mr. Bolze said. “It’s going to be a hotbed of the latest technology for more speed, more performance and cost competitiveness,” he said about the Greenville plant.

On top of the initial cost of getting the plant up and running, GE plans to invest a further $327 million into the facility over the next few years, Mr. Bolze said, largely on new equipment, additional buildout and prototype development.

It is expected to create at least 80 new engineering and manufacturing jobs, he said. The company estimates each job in advanced manufacturing supports 3.5 jobs through the supply chain. [snip]

Gen Mattis: ‘I Don’t Understand’ Speculation about Presidential Run

Jerry,

Another example of Heinlein’s “Crazy Years.” Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/04/22/mattis-i-dont-understand-speculation-about-presidential-run.html>

Mattis: ‘I Don’t Understand’ Speculation about Presidential Run

Apr 22, 2016 | by Hope Hodge Seck

Following his lecture on the Middle East and Iranian aggression, Mattis, the former four-star commander of U.S. Central Command and a current fellow at the Hoover Institution in California, implied he was mystified by the buzz surrounding his hypothetical candidacy.

“It’s been going on for 15 months. Since coming back from overseas, this is more of a foreign country than the places overseas,” he said. “I don’t understand it. It’s like America has lost faith in rational thought.”

And Trump swept all five states today.

Corruption in drug tests

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I believe that I should bring the case of Annie Dookhan to your attention:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/10/massachusetts_crime_lab_scandal_worsens_dookhan_and_farak.html

“Dookhan was sentenced in 2013 to at least three years in prison, after pleading guilty in 2012 to having falsified thousands of drug tests. Among her extracurricular crime lab activities, Dookhan failed to properly test drug samples before declaring them positive, mixed up samples to create positive tests, forged signatures, and lied about her own credentials. Over her nine-year career, Dookhan tested about

60,000 samples involved in roughly 34,000 criminal cases.Three years later, the state of Massachusetts still can’t figure out how to repair the damage she wrought almost single-handedly.

By the close of 2014, despite the fact that there were between

20,000-40,000 so-called “Dookhan defendants” (depending on whether you accept the state’s numbers or the American Civil Liberties Union’s), fewer than 1,200 had filed for postconviction relief.*

…

“In Massachusetts it doesn’t even end there. Only a few months after Dookhan’s conviction, it was discovered that another Massachusetts crime lab worker, Sonja Farak, who was addicted to drugs, not only stole her supply from the evidence room but also tampered with samples and performed tests under the influence, thus tainting as many as

10,000 or more prosecutions. Records show Farak used cocaine, crack, or methamphetamines daily or almost daily while she was at work, as well as ketamine, MDMA, ecstasy, phentermine, amphetamines, LSD, and marijuana. Farak pleaded guilty and served 18 months behind bars.”

========

I believe I mentioned the first thing we should do is restore integrity to our institutions, and this is definitely an example of that crying need; while quite a few of those defendants would probably be in prison anyway, there’s still thousands of people in jail on falsified evidence. The bottom line seems to be: Don’t take a drug test if you can help it, and stay out of the legal system if

you can help it. At least in Massachusetts, but slate reports that

we have had 20 drug lab scandals in multiple states, so we can’t assume the problem is isolated.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Everything is going to hell, and we wonder why Trump is rising? We got Hope and Change, and we got it good and hard; we elected Republicans to both Houses of Congress; and the beat goes on…

More on the EmDrive

Dear Dr. Pournelle,
Been reading your columns since 1982, when I started reading Byte. Started reading your fiction not much later, and been hooked on both ever since (Alas, kudos on the Robert Heinlein prize you won the other day).
Regarding the EmDrive you wrote about recently, I’ve been following the matter with interest, and just came across a surprisingly well-written article which goes beyond the maddening shallowness I’ve seen so far, but is still very approachable by the a layman: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601299/the-curious-link-between-the-fly-by-anomaly-and-the-impossible-emdrive-thruster/
Thought you’d be interested.
Cheers,
—
Durval Menezes.

I will believe it when I can be at the test… twice.

Rethinking Humanity’s Roots.

<http://discovermagazine.com/2016/march/13-rethinking-our-roots>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

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

Chaos Manor View, Thursday, April 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.

I think I have the full handle on the mysterious black line that sometimes appears in WORD documents and cannot be deleted. It’s not the feature called “Border lines” that I have never needed, but which can be erased by backspacing over them; this is far more persistent, and neither backspacing nor select/delete will get rid of them. Backspace literally does nothing; and you cannot select the line, and thus you can’t delete it. It looks like thus.

[Pasting into LiveWriter did in fact erase it; oh well.]

If I (in Word) backspace over that line, the result will be that text above the line is deleted; but the line remains. It can drive you mad, or at least had that effect on me.

It turns out to be a feature I will almost certainly never use, and there is a way to get rid of it. The feature is called “borders” (as opposed to border lines), and you can get such a line by:

1. Clicking anywhere in the paragraph above the lin. The line is a border to the paragraph above it.

2. Looking at the ribbon when “Home” is selected. At the bottom of the ribbon are some labels for boxed sections above them. The third section from the left is labeled “Paragraph”. The Paragraph box contains some icons. At to bottom right of those rows of icons is one that looks like a box with a cross in it. (At the bottom right of the whole box, to the right of the word Paragraph is a tiny icon all by itself. Ignore it for now.) At the right of the cross in box icon is a down arrow. Click on that.

3. This gets you another menu. The first four choices will get you a border for the paragraph you clicked before starting all this. The fifth choice is “No Border”. Click on that.

4. Close this menu and get back to the text you were writing; Lo! the ugly line is gone.

5. Note that by default this feature is set to “no borders”, but you can get it if you are a sloppy typist hitting multiple keys at once, which is how I got it; and no, I don’t know what keystroke sequence caused it. Yesterday I got it for perhaps my fourth time in decades of using Word, so it’s not a frequent problem

The “Border lines” Feature is similar to this paragraph border feature, but it is entirely different. By default it is on. When you type three or more consecutive = or – characters followed by Return, a line of them appears; this is not a paragraph border. It’s a standalone line, and it actually can be erased by backspacing over it. Indeed, when you first type Return creating that line, a small icon appears with it; clicking that icon offers a menu, one item of which is to erase that line. You can turn this feature off by the tedious process of File>Options>Proofing>AutoCorrect Options>AutoCorrect As You Type and then look for a box called “Border lines”; if the box is checked, you can make these Border lines with three or more ___ or — or === (and possibly other characters) followed by Return. I’m not sure you’ll ever want them, but if you do, that’s the way to get them.

My thanks to Eric Pobirs, Rick Hellewell, and Peter Glaskowsky, hard working Chaos Manor Advisors, who dug all this up for me. Thanks also to reader Kenneth Mitchell.

My typing is awful today, sloppier than usual, so I’ll hold off on writing more about Trump. Do note that I am not endorsing him neither am I condemning him. I am merely trying to assess him as fairly as I can. Unlike Andrew Jackson, our first populist pragmatist president, he is not a general with command experience, but he does have managerial experience of large projects.

As Newt Gingrich, whom I consider one of the most astute politicians I have ever known, says, Trump learns fast; when he began this campaign, it was well known that many Republicans rejected the Establishment (the rejecters included Newt), but no one except Trump had any faint notion that Trump would be the front runner in Republican delegates by April, 2016. If anyone had been sure of that, they could have cleaned up in Los Vegas. Yet Trump learned fast – faster than anyone Newt has ever known. It would be foolish to imagine that someone who can learn that quickly about electoral politics would not be able to do the job of President.

Pure management is not so difficult; having great vision is more important.

Which again is not an endorsement; it is an argument against rejecting him out of hand.

The final straw…

Considering the incident in Murfreesboro where grade school children as young as first graders were arrested and handcuffed for NOT trying to break up a fight, I suspect that was a “damned if you do damned if you don’t” situation. Had they tried to break up the fight, odds are they would have been arrested and handcuffed for fighting.

“…the kids were charged with “criminal responsibility for the conduct of another,” which according to Tennessee offense criminal code includes incidents when a “person fails to make a reasonable effort to prevent” an offense.”

That opens a can of worms!

Suppose an individual with a handgun carry permit is legally armed and sees someone running from the convenience store across the street with what appears to be a bag of money in one hand and a gun in the other. If the legally armed individual takes no action, that could be considered justification for a charge of “criminal responsibility”. If the legally armed individual does take action the result could range from a detained and ultimately arrested robber and a commendation for the armed individual to a wounded or dead robber with the armed individual arrested and in jail charged with murder. Or the armed robber could shoot and kill or seriously injure the legally armed individual and make an escape. Or in an exchange of gunfire innocent bystanders could be wounded or killed.

Seems to me as though the Murfreesboro police stepped in a pile of **** by their actions here.

FWIW I live about thirty miles south of Murfreesboro.

Charles Brumbelow

I agree; I certainly do not see how intrusion into a criminal act can be made a citizen responsibility under the threat of pains and penalties for inaction; at the same time, self-government requires some citizen responsibilities.

And of course in your example the running man could be the store owner fleeing from unarmed robber whom he declined to shoot and was subsequently attempting to escape brutality. I could come up with many other scenarios.

Murfreesborough school arrests and gun control

Dear Jerry –

The arrests in Murfreesborough would seem to have a remarkable unintended consequence – the Murfreesborough police are apparently claiming an affirmative obligation on bystanders to intervene when a crime is committed. From the article you linked: “The arrests at Hobgood Elementary School occurred after the students were accused of not stopping a fight”.

If so, this would seem to fly in the face of the advice of many big-city police forces and gun-control advocates, who say “Let the police handle it. They are trained and equipped to do the job.”

And if we, as citizens, are obligated to intervene, it’s hard to argue that we should be prohibited access to the tools needed – guns.

Of course, the article may have garbled the facts of the incident (which would not be a total surprise). It’s entirely possible that, given the age group, the kids essentially forced the combatants to fight – but that is not what is being reported. I’m sure you remember incidents from your grade school years when this sort of thing happened – I do. A ring of bystanders forms around an argument, and the two are goaded into a fight while the onlookers urge them on.

Interesting development.

Regards,

Jim Martin

The principles involved deserve discussion. That is what legislatures are supposed to do.

Norway Violated Rights of Anders Behring Breivik, Mass Killer, Judge Rules – MSN News

He thinks his isolation in his three-room suite with a window and fresh air, a treadmill, refrigerator,  t.v., DVD player, and PlayStation is “torture” — his word, and that the government is “slowly killing him.”
He should watch MS-NBC and see how prisoners in isolation are treated in the United States and be BLOODY GRATEFUL that this is his prison sentence for murdering 77 people,  most of them teens, out of religious bigotry — the plan for which he had made on his computer in his bedroom in his mother’s house.
He is upset that they won’t let him use the Internet to communicate with other white supremacists in other countries.

What happens in American prisons is barbaric.  What is happening to him is a mercy beyond privilege, given his crime.

Norway Violated Rights of Anders Behring Breivik, Mass Killer, Judge Rules

By HENRIK PRYSER LIBELL

The New York Times – The New York Times – ‎10‎:‎41‎ ‎AM

Mr. Breivik had argued that the conditions of his confinement, including restrictions on communication, were a violation of the European Convention of Human Rights.

http://a.msn.com/r/2/BBs1ROu?a=1&m=en-us

If I had a complaint about the terms of his sentence, it would not be that it wax inhumanly unpleasant; were I a relative of one of his victims, I would have a great deal more to say.

New EmDrive Theory “ MIT Tech Review Subject : New EmDrive Theory “

Jerry,
I have been disappointed in the apparent ‘scientific’ response to the EmDrive. If we have tests that show it works, and ‘scientists’ respond by saying ‘It cannot work if I cannot explain how it works’, then we have returned to the times of the Inquisition, just short the burning stakes. Does anyone recall that steam engines were built before we had any good explanation for how they worked? Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics were inspired by the effort to understand the theoretical basis for the steam engine. Then, they were used to design better steam engines.
Reading the MIT article, I note that the theory put forth by McCulloch appears to require a variance in the speed of light at the different ends of the drive cone. Any such difference could be accounted for by differences in the medium the light is passing through. It’s a thought.

Kevin

Peter Glaskowsky observes:

I’m unqualified to have an opinion about Unruh radiation or whether it might explain these observations, but I will note that there is considerably less experimental evidence for the EmDrive thruster than there is for cold fusion, and that turned out to be pathological science, so this might also be.

.               png

I was once a fusion enthusiast (see Twenty Twenty Visions), but  practical fusion plant has been (according to enthusiasts) thirty years away for fifty years, and remains so now even for the most enthusiastic of its supporters. If we are to be saved by controlled fusion, it will be our great grandchildren who achieve it.

 

lying to federal investigators

Jerry,

I don’t know how we got into this mess, but I think the founders would be rolling in their graves about the idea of lying when not under oath in court being a federal crime. Apparently, lying to just about any federal investigator is now a federal crime.

-- 

Phil Tharp

I completely agree. Signing a false document under penalty of perjury or lying under oath is an obvious crime; but it is now best never to talk to Federal Officers, even to give your name or the time of day. Cooperating with them and later shown that you were wrong can get you charged with a felony. “Icht will gar nicht sagen,” is better.

Nice Trio

Jerry,

A little relief from the very silly season

The Comet, the Owl, and the Galaxy : <http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160421.html>

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

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

Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, April 20, 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’ve been distracted by health concerns, not so severe as to be life threatening but serious enough that they can’t be ignored, and consume time in dealing with them. So it goes. I am also doing my turn on the really excellent book Niven, Barnes, and I are doing on interstellar colonization; we’re trying to be realistic, including looking into why someone would want to colonize another star, given the problems of getting there. It’s good stuff, but time consuming, with all my work confined to two finger typing, with frequent corrections of every line, sometimes every word.

That, by the way, progresses better than you might think, but only so ;long as I use Word 2010: that version has a very easy method for adding to the autocorrect dictionary, so that qword can easily be converted to word, and words with a c at the end, or c at the beginning, can sometimes by autocorrected; the c comes from hitting the c key along with the space bar. There is also the problem of losing all my text if I hit alt-spacebar and certain other keys thereafter; the text vanishes.

I’ve overcome that by getting the habit of saving as “currentwork.doc” what I am working on at the moment, and setting AutoSave to the shortest possible interval and then clicking on the little save icon whenever I look up and correct.

Today I hit some key combination that put a black line in my Word text. I couldn’t delete it, either with the backspace or the delete key, and I couldn’t select it, so I couldn’t delete it that way. Went online and asked about undeletable black lines, but the remedy I was told would work told me to use click on items that don’t appear in the Windows 10 ribbon; what version they are for is irrelevant. I finally copied all my text and pasted it into Notepad; then I copied that, and pasted it into a just opened Word file; jimmied the definition of Normal to be what I wanted; and normalized everything. Worked but seems needlessly tedious. Apparently I did something like hit the dash key three time and Word helped me by turning that into so kind of format box, and the instructions for turning that off can’t be found; or rather I didn’t find them for Word 10. In the old days I’d dig until I solved that, but I used the Notepad trick instead. I was eager to keep writing, because it was a good scene I had been doing. Didn’t do much good, of course. Once the flow is broken, it’s hard to start up again.

But it was a good scene, and now I have time to do a View. I was describing a girl, nineteen, as she wakes up from cold sleep to find she’s still aboard a ship, not landed on new planet as she had expected when she went to sleep.

I’m about to give up on reading neo-conservative magazines, at least until after the election. They could have an article about a paleontologist discovering a new dinosaur, but before the article was done there would be a screed denouncing Trump. They’re obsessed with him and can’t write about anything else. The current Weekly Standard has an article about Hillary and her eMail and the Attorney General; and sure enough, they have to take a shot at Trump as part of it, as if he had anything to do with her keeping government business on her private server.

Trump is probably the least qualified candidate who ran for the Republican nomination this year. If you didn’t know that, you’d have to be a hermit to avoid finding it out. He also has far more delegates than any other candidate. I would think that would send a clear message to the Republican elite, particularly the country club establishment; but like the Bourbon kings of France restored after the Revolution, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Wouldn’t I want a more qualified, somewhat more experienced candidate? Well, of course. But the establishment wasn’t about to let anyone not within its ranks to get anywhere close to the nomination. In 1956 the goal was “anyone but Reagan” among the Republican elite. Now it’s anybody but Trump. Before Trump they made it clear to all: it’s going to be one of us, like it or lump it. We can deal with upstarts.

But they didn’t intimidate Trump, and now he’s laid all of their compliant candidates low, and they’re turning to an old enemy, Cruz, in despair. The notion is that he’ll “grow” in office; it’s for sure that Trump won’t grow under their definition of grow.

But in fact he’s likely to. He has some good advisors and he has a definite point of view that may be hard to discern because it’s masked by his blatant – loudmouthed and irritating, if you like – tactics. But he has never wavered on his desire to fill the Supreme Court with Justices as near in scholarship and view to Scalia as possible; that alone would be enough to get me to the polls for Trump if he’s nominated.

He has consistently said we need to turn control of the schools to the local districts and stop dictating to them from Washington. This has been taken as meaning that he doesn’t know what to do on a nation al scale. Well, I have news: neither does anyone else, and the attempt, even with the best of will, will always fail. The schools worked better, over all, when they were paid for by local school district taxes and run by local school boards elected by the people who paid those taxes. If you don’t believe that, get a copy of the California Sixth Grade Reader from a hundred years ago and compare it to your child’s present day ninth grade reader. Then weep.

No, he’s not a “movement conservative”, but I’m not sure I still am, and I was a protégé of Russell Kirk and Stefan Possony, and a friend of Bill Buckley and Willmore Kendall. I’ve been in that “movement” a long time. Long enough to see National Review use the egregious Frum to read most of us out of the movement.

Trump is not a movement conservative, but his inclination is to set goals and get people working on them, not to jail and fine them for not doing so. He understands that being served by mindless minions is not the path to glory or wealth. Compared to Hillary or Sanders or anyone in Obama’s train, I’ll take Trump any day. I would prefer someone with government experience – some, not one whose only experience is in government – but we seem to be fresh out of those. I suppose I’d rather have establishment country club Republicans than anyone likely to be nominated by the Democratic establishment even if a plague took all the present candidates; we tried that with Bush I, who cleared the White House of Reagan people the day after inauguration, and proceeded to saddle us with the Americans With Disabilities act and a new Federal bureaucracy; but that’s another story.

Trump is a pragmatic populist. I can live with that.

Trumpism and Clintonism Are the Future

I know this guy. He’s not a conservative, but he’s smart.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/opinion/campaign-stops/trumpism-and-clintonismare-the-future.html?_r=1

It is certainly an analysis worth reading.

Zubrin: ‘The profound global warming of the past four centuries cannot be plausibly ascribed to anthropogenic causes, but it certainly has happened, and the greens cannot deny it.’

<http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/04/where_are_americas_drowned_cities.html>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

New EmDrive Theory – MIT Tech Review

Dear Dr. Pournelle,
A recent article in the on-line edition of MIT Technology Review describes a new EmDrive theory. The theory may account for the EmDrive’s apparent violation of conservation of momentum. Moreover, the article suggests fly-by anomalies (described as unaccountable “jumps in momentum observed in some spacecraft as they fly past Earth toward other planets”) provide supporting observational evidence. Here is the link:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601299/the-curious-link-between-the-fly-by-anomaly-and-the-impossible-emdrive-thruster/#/set/id/601302/
Yours truly,
Jim Bonang

Fascinating.

For all you Star Trek Fans

Almost fell off my chair!

Star Trek – The Lost Episode

Star Trek – The Lost Episode

Although the lost 80th episode was never aired, this trailer has been uncovered through the diligent efforts of …

 

Brice Yokem

This is intolerable.  You don’t arrest six-years-olds at their school for NOT being in a fight which didn’t even occur at the school.

First-graders cuffed, arrested, charged; Murfreesboro outraged

Jessica Bliss, The (Nashville) Tennessean

USA TODAY – USA TODAY – ‎Wednesday‎, ‎April‎ ‎20‎, ‎2016

Police handcuffed multiple students, ages 6 to 11, at a public elementary school in Murfreesboro on Friday, inspiring public outcry and adding fuel to already heightened tensions between law enforcement and communities of color nationwide.

http://a.msn.com/r/2/BBs1uxm?a=1&m=en-us

Vaccines and Antigen Load

Hi Jerry,
I’d just like to point out a couple of things about your argument about vaccines. I’m willing to accept as plausible the idea that a harmful level of vaccination exists but I’m a) a little unclear why what we are doing today is considered “too much” (or potentially so) and what we did 5, 10 or 20 years ago isn’t? It sounds somewhat arbitrary especially when b) the antigen load – the amount of foreign material is actually lower today than it was in 1983 when we covered only seven diseases. Back then we were putting 15 000 antigens into a child by age four. Today it’s something like 400. So with regard to the foreign substances anyway today’s vaccine schedule is lower than the one I had when I was a kid.

J

And it will take years to determine the effect on number of autoimmune disorders

Out-of-date apps put three million servers at risk of ransomware (ZD)

About 2,100 servers across 1,600 different networks have already been compromised, meaning they can be infected with malware at any time.

By Zack Whittaker for Zero Day | April 18, 2016 — 14:56 GMT (07:56 PDT) | 

More than three million internet-facing servers are at risk of hijack by ransomware because they are running out-of-date software.

Cisco-owned Talos Group said in a blog post that they had conducted a search of machines that were already compromised, which showed at least 2,100 servers across 1,600 separate networks, belonging to schools and universities, government departments and aviation companies. were vulnerable to infection.

Malicious actors are using out-of-date versions of Red Hat’s JBoss enterprise server, a middleware software that integrates devices, data, and users across different platforms, as the initial point of compromise.

The security research team warned that these servers could be infected by Samsam malware at any moment, a new kind of ransomware that infects through compromised servers and locks up files until a ransom is paid.

Hackers targeting servers is a relatively new kind of attack for ransomware actors, given that a network’s most sensitive data rests on the server rather than individual computers. That raises the stakes, and makes it more likely that the ransom will be paid.

Some of the compromised servers belonged to schools running Destiny, a content management system developed used to keep track of books and other items. Follett, which maintains the Destiny software, immediately issued a fix for the flaw, which researchers said it was “imperative” that all users install the patches.

Talos researchers said in their advisory urged administrators to remove external access to the server, but added that ideally reimaging the system and installing patches would be better.

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

Chaos Manor View, Friday, April 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.

My taxes are done and mailed out. I made a bit less this year than last, meaning that I overpaid the quarterly estimate payments, so I should get some back. Just as well. Authors have that problem: you can’t ever quite know how much you’ll make, and money tends to come in large lumps or not at all. With the rise of eBooks that’s changing a bit; more importantly my backlist is worth something; I made a decent amount out of 20 and 30 year old books, and Amazon pays monthly, rather unlike traditional publishers who periodically issue reprints of books, then pay promptly on credible threat of lawsuit.

I have to take Roberta out to Kaiser this afternoon; she has got an appointment with a suitable specialist, and we may see the end of the problems she’s been having. We can all hope so, but I’m not likely to get much work done today. Actually, I have already more or less cleaned up my desk and got a long way towards clearing my mail, so I guess you’d have to say I got some needed work done, just it wasn’t fiction.

This came out in early April, and has been in the stack for commenting on ever since, but I’ve been distracted. The topic is important.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/anti-vaccination-lunacy-wont-stop-1459721652

Anti-Vaccination Lunacy Won’t Stop

Robert De Niro made the right call in pulling ‘Vaxxed’ from his film festival. But the bogus message rolls on.

By

W. Ian Lipkin

April 3, 2016 6:14 p.m. ET

555 COMMENTS

This week’s fare at the Angelika Film Center in New York City includes “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” a purported documentary that began its run on Friday. If only the theater’s schedulers had been making a droll point by choosing April Fool’s Day to launch this dangerously misleading movie falsely linking vaccines to autism. Instead, they all too eagerly snatched up the film after it had been ousted on March 26 from plans for the Tribeca Film Festival later this month.

The decision to remove “Vaxxed” from the festival was the right one, and credit goes to organizers, in particular co-founder Robert De Niro, who has a son with autism, for having the courage to reconsider their plans. If “Vaxxed” had been submitted as science fiction, it would merit attention for its story line, character development and dialogue. But as a documentary it misrepresents what science knows about autism, undermines public confidence in the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and attacks the integrity of legitimate scientists and public-health officials.

By the topic, I don’t mean Mr. De Niro’s decision not to show a film I’ve never seen, because from the description of it I doubt it presents any evidence I’m not aware of; the important topic is, should you get your children vaccinated; or in my case, having done so, do you attempt to persuade your grown children to vaccinate if they have married someone who doesn’t believe in it? Just what are the risks and benefits, and is there more expected value in vaccination than in avoiding it?

The questions are more ethical than scientific. Some are ethical arguments posing as scientific questions; and, alas, there is so far as I can see a fair amount of misrepresentation, and sometimes outright lying, on both sides of the issue.

First, let’s clear out some deadwood about risks. There is no such thing as a risk-free vaccination (or, as is more usual, an immunization, usually by hypodermic injection. I say this because when I was young and smallpox vaccination was compulsory and nearly universal, even in rural areas of the Old South, the procedure was fairly painful, and left a noticeable scar. The vaccination fluid was put on your skin, usually high on the left arm for boys, but alternatively on the inside of the thigh for girls, after which the nurse or technician, or rarely the doctor, jabbed you about thirty times with a sharp needle while the vaccination serum was on the skin, thus conveying it through the skin and into the muscle below. The reason most girls chose the inner thigh was because the scar, which was about the size of a nickel coin, was quite visible, and in its early years unsightly, although it faded with time. I’ve had two, one in first grade which was the usual time in Tennessee in the thirties, and once when I joined the Army at the outbreak of the Korean War.

By the time the immunization of the second vaccination wore off, smallpox had been eliminate in the United States, and vaccinations were no longer routine or compulsory. Vaccination worked. Smallpox exists only in a few laboratories, kept by Powers that have promised not to weaponize it or use it in secret to decimate their enemies or commercial rivals.

In early colonial days, the risk of death from vaccination was not negligible, varying from a usual 2% to sometimes as high as 8%, depending on location and the general health of the population. Since the fatality rate of smallpox was always higher than 20% and rose to 80% in some outbreaks, and there was a pretty good likelihood of at least one outbreak of pox in your locality during your lifetime, there were powerful arguments in favor of vaccination, even in the early times before Jenner discovered that if you were deliberately given a case of cowpox, it immunized you to smallpox. In pre-Revolutionary times, vaccinations were done by introducing tissue from a smallpox patient into your system. In the TV series on John Adams, Abigail Adams is shown insisting that her family be inoculated; the physician uses a scalpel and tissue from a pox victim.

As the science of immunology developed, vaccines for a wide variety of diseases were developed. Some of these had been routine childhood diseases that nearly everyone got, with fairly low – but not zero – fatality rates. Others, like diphtheria, had much higher fatality rates. Compulsory immunization became widespread, and we are all better off for it.

It was quite clear that if everyone were inoculated against, say, measles, then even the small number of measles fatalities would be prevented; and well meaning people hastened to make inoculation against “childhood diseases,” fatal or not, compulsory.

There were religious objections, and various states had various procedures for objecting to, and gaining exemptions to, the inoculations. Naturally, obtaining these exemptions was made rather onerous; the whole point of compulsory inoculates was to develop herd immunity and thus eradicate the disease in the United States.  There were inevitable tragic cases, but these were considered unfortunate but acceptable as a cost of public safety.

In my judgment this was carried beyond all reason. While immunization to very low rate fatality diseases was effective, the number of fatalities due to the inoculations themselves was not zero, and a few of these inoculations killed children who were unlikely ever to have contracted the disease unless it was deliberately given to them by the inoculation. I would think that the risk/benefit ratio must be huge before compulsory vaccination and immunization is decreed. It is clear that smallpox vaccination was of enormous benefit to all mankind. It is not so clear that measles immunization reaches that level; surely it is worth debating.

When my children were very young, it was routine in the States of Washington and California to insist that they be given a “DPT” shot: an inoculation against Diphtheria, Pertussis (whooping cough), and Tetanus (lockjaw). Most children got this, and the public health results were impressively good. But over time there came the theory that if several inoculations were good, more would be better; and to save time and money, let them all be given at once. In some States and Counties as many as 18 inoculations were given at once; and these were compulsory.

The theory was that if a few inoculations were good, more would be better, and look at how much money we saved!

In my judgment this went far beyond reason. Most adherents of inoculations will assert that multiple inoculations are no more dangerous than single ones; but this appears to be an assumption. The purpose of immunization and inoculation is to stimulate the immune system. It would seem reasonable to assume that in a some cases this might work all too well, and overstimulate the immune system; possibly even to cause autoimmune disorders. This is an hypothesis impossible to disprove. It is not believed by most immunologists; but their evidence for this rests on analysis of the same statistical data that the proponents of overstimulation of the immune system causing autoimmune disorders use to prove their case. Each side accuses the other of not understanding the data. Most of the adherents on either side do not understand statistical inference well enough to inspire much confidence in their conclusions. Both sides also contain well qualified statistical experts. 

In the case of smallpox, the benefits are so great that it seems pretty clear that compulsory immunization is the ethical thing to do.  In the case of measles I do not think the case is that clear. 

Fortunately, we have ceased to give a dozen or more immunizations at the same time to infants; but the arguments used to justify doing so have embittered the immunization debates. Some of the proponents of immunization flat out lied (as did some of its opponents, to be sure). Both sides appealed to “science” although both sides were defended loudly and publicly by “experts” who manifestly knew so little about statistical inference that their opinions on the subject were worthless. Common sense would say that increased stimulation of the immune system could incline its overdevelopment and bring about autoimmune disorders. Fortunately the massive multiple immunizations were mostly discontinued.

Immunization is one of the great discoveries of medical history. Smallpox and other plagues had an enormous effect on human history. When I was a child, the fear of polio ran like wildfire through the whole community every spring and early summer. Outbreaks of polio were common. The Salk vaccine against polio was discovered when I was in graduate school, and immunization to polio took three sessions. The early immunizations were administered in a sugar cube. I was among the very first to sign up to get them, and I had my three within months of Salk’s discovery. I was at that time a member of a fencing club, and I had a casual friend named Bruce who was a good practice partner at foil. I was an epee man, and he was somewhat better at foil that I was, so foil practice bouts with him tended to be instructive. Then, one say, he didn’t show up at the club; it was said he had polio. I visited him in hospital; he was in an iron lung, a pressure chamber that breathed for him. He had taken the first of the immunization sugar cubes, but before he got the rest he came down with a crippling case of polio. My visit with him was terrifying and depressing. There but for the grace of God…

My point being that I start with a favorable view of immunizations. I reject on theoretical grounds massive multiple immunizations; give a dozen immunizations, but let them be spread out over a few years, not given all at once. I suppose the (in my time) traditional DPT shot is all right, since it was nearly universal in my day and the rise of autoimmune disorders did nor start until I was out of graduate school; but surely three at a time is enough? Perhaps three in infancy; three more on the third birthday, work up to having had a dozen immunizations by first grade; but spread them out over the first five or six years of life. Add a few more in grade school.

But use a bit of common sense. Stimulation of the immune system is good; but can there not be overstimulation? At least in a statistically significant part of the population?

I received this comment on the above:

 

Salk Vaccine

Dear Dr Pournelle,
An interesting comment on vaccines. You have, I think, confused the Salk and Sabin vaccines. the first vaccine for polio was developed by Jonas Salk, became available in 1955 and was given by injection, not orally. the Sabin vaccine which was the oral one was developed after this and became available in the early 60s.

The Salk vaccine is an inactivated virus and is not able to produce infection; it has an efficacy of up to 90% or so against some strains of the Polio virus.

The Sabin vaccine is an attenuated live virus taken orally. It has few side effects and the risk of contracting Polio is very low, of the order of 1 or 2 per million treated.

There have been many lives saved by these vaccines (and many others). in the year before the Salk vaccine there were some 35,000 cases in the US and by the early 60’s this had fallen to fewer than 5,000 or so according to Sorem A, Sass EJ, Gottfried G (1996). Polio’s legacy: an oral history. Washington, D.C: University Press of America. ISBN 0-7618-0144-8.
I remember getting the Salk while at school in 1957 or thereabouts.
By the time I worked as a resident at a children’s hospital in the early 70’s there had not been a case admitted for many years. We still saw many admissions with measles, mumps and rubella however, with encephalitis and deaths at rates much higher than the complications of those vaccines. I won’t get into any comment on Andrew Wakefield and the harm his greed has caused by influencing the scientifically illiterate.
Kind regards
Nick Hendel

Thank you for the correction. As I said, I write from memory on this. I think it clear that the elimination of polio is another example of having made the right decisions; we need not fear polio every Spring.

 

Vaccinations

I was pleased to see your reasoned approach to vaccinations, but please be aware that the CDC currently recommends at least 15 vaccination doses in the first six months of life. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/downloads/child/0-18yrs-combined-schedule-bw.pdf

M

I was unaware of that. I think it a mistake, and I do not see the urgency.

 

I received this Thursday. It deserves attention. I haven’t time to write a critique, but I urge you to read it.

Why Vladimir Putin’s People Love Him.

<http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/13/why-vladimir-putins-people-love-him/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Particularly note Putin’s reactions to American intervention against the Serbs in the Balkans. There was little debate in the White House or in Congress as we took the anti-Christian side in a conflict far away with little national interest at stake, or so we thought. But the stakes were high: we had much to lose, even if we had little prospect of gain. Why did we intervene? In the Balkans?

I have received this comment:

 

 

 

 

 

 

DARPA X program?
Congrats on the Heinlein award! Well deserved.
DARPA is working on affordable space access. I guess we can hope.
XS-1 has four primary technical goals:
Fly 10 times in a 10-day period (not including weather, range and emergency delays) to demonstrate aircraft-like access to space and eliminate concerns about the cost-effectiveness and reliability of reusable launch.
Achieve flight velocity sufficiently high to enable use of a small (and therefore low-cost) expendable upper stage.
Launch a 900- to 1,500-pound representative payload to demonstrate an immediate responsive launch capability able to support both DoD and commercial missions. The same XS-1 vehicle could eventually also launch future 3,000+- pound payloads by using a larger expendable upper stage.
Reduce the cost of access to space for 3,000+-pound payloads, with a goal of approximately $5 million per flight for the operational system, which would include a reusable booster and expendable upper stage(s).
http://www.uasvision.com/2016/04/14/darpa-xs-1-program-enters-phase-2/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_campaign=541443774a-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_799756aeb7-541443774a-297532717

Jim Utt

An important interview:

http://www.geekwire.com/2016/interview-jeff-bezos/

Bill Whittle knocks it out of the ballpark

In this video Bill Whittle takes on the whining progressive leftist crybabies who fall apart at the sight of a gun or a white person wearing dreadlocks without appreciating the blacks who suffered so much and wear them.

Maybe it’s time we start screaming at these crybabies about their cultural appropriation of everything from modern medicine to, would you believe, hip hop?

APPROPRIATE THIS!

https://youtu.be/pMYRYKvAEaY

He knocked the ball right out of the ball park.

{^_-}

Amusing, but perhaps this is breaking a butterfly on the wheel?

http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/8/11389252/magic-leap-patent-application-augmented-reality-coffee

Magic Leap has written our future in its patent filings

The problem with this patent is prior art. In 1998 I wrote about augmented reality that multiple people could share. If I thought of it, lots of other people thought of it. It is not a new idea, I think.

Ed

 

 

Well, among other things, it would appear they’re trying to patent The Matrix, and I expect the Wachowskis (sisters both now, I have to understand) might have somewhat to say about that. 

But in general it sounds like they ARE trying to simply patent SFnal ideas. They are probably gambling upon scientists and engineers eventually figuring out how to do these things, and then they come in and declare that it either belongs to them, or levy royalties upon their use, because they already own the patents.

I put it as not unlike the folks who go around gathering up web domain names, and then offering your own name back to you for an annual fee.

I have had little dealings with the patent office in my time. (Not none, but not a lot.) So I have no idea if the patent office staff has a degree of common sense or not. It might work, or they might throw it all out.

That’s just the take of an author deep into completing her latest WIP by writing the climax — meaning my brain is mostly elsewhere at the moment. YMMV.
Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”

   Trolls trolling?

 

Congress and classified material

Dear Jerry,

A recent post by a Former Serving Officer stated a member of Congress could be legally charged if they were to reveal classified information.

At first I nodded in agreement, but then I wondered: what about if the member of Congress made the revelation on the floor of Congress in a speech?

I could look this up, but it’s so much more interesting to ask someone with a PhD in political science: Isn’t there some form of immunity for members of Congress when speaking officially on the floor of the Congress?

If so (and I do not remember all the details, so I may be quite mistaken), what would happen if a member of Congress stood up and read into the record something horrendously vital to national security, like the location of the national Twinky reserve and the combination to the safe containing Elvis’s current address and similar stuff?

Seriously, though, does Congressional immunity apply?

Petronius

The plain language of the Constitution gives Senators and Members of Congress absolute immunity from arrest or interrogation for anything said in speeches or debates; if a Congressman gives classified material in a speech, it is unclear what, other than removing his access to such materials, can be done. Of course this does not apply to officers of the United States, including heads of departments or even the President. There seem to be conflicting precedents.

Wisdom on growing older

“It ain’t no disgrace to be old. But darned if it ain’t _inconvenient_, I can tell you that much about it.” – “Moms” Mabley

I am seriously considering getting this emblazoned on a sweat shirt.

(“inconvenient”) in italics.

John

Send me one if you do…

Left key and right key

In Windows, left mouse key means “do it” (sometimes click once, sometimes click twice) or “choose this one”. Right mouse key means “give me a list of stuff I can do with this thing.”
Of course this split doesn’t really mean much for a START button.
I’ve been using the right button to get “File Explorer” and “System Properties” since Windows 95, so looking for stuff here made sense.
I’ve been a “keystroke oriented” windows user since the beginning. For a while in the nineties I had a laptop with windows and no mouse unless I bothered to dig one out of the side pocket of the briefcase — I usually didn’t bother.
I was one of the ones who sent the “safe mode” advice. I got to the run command with the keystrokes I’ve been using for the RUN command since the nineties. Well, not quite. It used to be control-escape, R to get the run window. Now, control escape, start typing finds “stuff”. So when I tried the old control-escape r … it automatically suggested “Run – desktop app” as an available choice.

Greg Goss

A-10

Air Force planning to build an A-10 replacement?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a20376/a-10-replacement-plane-air-force-a-x/
I’d have to see plans and proposal to believe it. My faith in the upper echelons of the Air Force is lower than low. But, it wouldn’t be the first time that I’ve been wrong!

Peter Wityk

We can hope, but I have little faith that they will do it right.

Court Rules Police Can Legally Make Up Lies to Pull People Over To Fish for Criminal Behavior buffy willow

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/court-rules-police-legally-lies-pull-people-fish-criminal-behavior/

Appalling. But not surprising.

Cordially,

John

Heinlein Award

Jerry,

Congratulations on receiving the well deserved Heinlein Award!

The trail that you have helped to blaze through the thickets of Government Bureaucracy has been taken up by the Private Sector. The progress that has been made by SpaceX and Blue Origin is moving us closer to a Moon Colony. As you have said many times, the Moon is the logical place to launch missions to the Asteroids and Planets.

Space Exploration has been on hold for almost 50 years since the first Moon Landing. The entry of the private sector into the orbital launch and suborbital space tourism business is generating public interest and moving the bar forward. Private Companies are starting to investigate the economics of a permanent Moon Colony.

A Human foothold outside the Earth’s Gravity offers opportunities far beyond Space Exploration. One of these is experiments designed to gain an understanding of Gravity. 45 years ago I used to go to the same bar in Pasadena frequented by Richard Feynman. One evening I found myself sitting at a table next to his and asked him when he thought that we might have an understanding of gravity. He replied, “Not in my lifetime or yours.” We know that he was correct on the first part of his answer. I hope he was wrong on the second part. The recent detection of gravity waves and the prospect of breakthroughs leading to increased Space Exploration give me hope.

Thank you for all you have done to keep the hope and promise of Space alive while entertaining us with fascinating stories of what the future might hold.

Bob Holmes

Thanks. I’ll put this up to stand for many others. Thanks to all of you.

Prosecutor suspended over fake Facebook profile used in murder prosecution.

<https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/04/13/prosecutor-suspended-over-fake-facebook-profile-used-in-murder-prosecution/>

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Roland Dobbins

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