Category Archives: View

Chaos Manor View, Sunday, December 20, 2015

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019KYLOKQ?tag=chaosmanor-20

There Will Be War Volume 10 is out and can be ordered now. Early on would be good, I suppose, assuming making the top of Amazon sales lists is a good thing. In any event, it’s out, if you like military or war science fiction you’ll love it, and I can move on to the next books. My typing is worse than usual tonight. I’d apologize, but with luck you won’t see that; the spell checker will find the typos, autocorrect will take care of about half, and I’ll get the others, It takes me as long to correct a sentence as it did to write it. Ah, well.

One of the essays in the book, by Commander Phillip Pournelle, won the Surface Navy Association Literary Award for the for the year:

SNA Literary Award Winner Notification

Dear Commander Pournelle,

It is my pleasure to inform you that have been selected as this year’s

recipient of the Surface Navy Association Literary Award for your article

“The Deadly Future of Littoral Sea Control “published in the July 2015 issue

of Proceedings.

I have attached a letter from the President of SNA announcing your selection

and providing details on how to receive this honor. The award is normally

presented during the Awards Luncheon on 14 January at our National Symposium

in Washington DC, 12-14 January 2016 (details at Caution-www.navysna.org).

Bill Erickson

CAPT, USN (Ret)

Executive Director, Surface Navy Association

mathematical greetings of the season

Mathematics IS a language, you know…  😀
Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”

IQ as predictor.
IQ is a valuable predictor as I also learned in Graduate school. I think the newer concept of EQ or Emotional Quotient is also a valuable predictor. The combination of the two is even more effective.
IQ is not well defined as a review of the literature will show, unfortunately EQ is even less well defined. Still the concept of measuring EQ as a general form of emotional maturity adds a very useful dimension to predictive validity.
At least for me, it helps explain the number of people that I meet that are very smart but not very successful in life.

Tom Carey

A good part of the book Hive Mind is devoted to speculations on why IQ is a less successful predictor of individual achievement that a national average IQ is of GNP. It remains the best single predictor with individuals, but multivariate predictors are far better; as I have written before. A good part of my graduate work in psychology was in multivariate analysis and required that I go to the math department to learn calculus, matrix algebra, theory of probability, and experimental statistics – which eventually sparked my going into operations research/systems analysis. I started as an aerospace psychologist, but didn’t stay there long.

Mayans, giants in North America?

<http://www.examiner.com/article/south-american-and-mayan-dna-discovered-southern-appalachians>

<http://www.examiner.com/article/ruins-georgia-mountains-show-evidence-of-maya-connection>

<http://www.examiner.com/article/did-giants-once-live-north-america>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

My, my. First I have heard of this, Thanks.

On Random Promotion

You write:
<<
Cicero said that the problem with democracy was it prevented able men from rising to the top.
>>
Then Cicero was being too clever by half.
Lawrence J. Peter put it more scientifically. He said that democracy puts no barriers for men to rise to their level of incompetence and stay there; whereas aristocracies, with their artificial barriers and bridges to advancement, force some able men to stop advancing before they reach their level of incompetence, and allows other able men to bypass their level entirely.
I propose a system of random promotions, followed by a period of training and vetting, and re-demotion if necessary. In a sense jury duty is such a system; and so is aristocracy, given that position is an ‘accident of birth’. The Tibetan Buddhists choose their Dalai Lama by elaborate mystical rites that no doubt make internal sense, but which I think look a lot like random sampling.
If random sampling works for the Dalai Lama, and jury duty, then maybe it would work for the Presidency. Here’s my proposal; once every four years, a dozen or so citizens get a letter saying “Greetings! You are now a Presidential candidate!” They then suffer the usual journalistic vetting that candidates suffer now. Also there are behind-the-scenes meetings. Some candidates will try to beg off, but only serious excuses are accepted, as with jury duty now. After winnowing comes the election, for you need the appearance of public input for our system to work.

Paradoctor

Athens considered having a random factor in choosing high office – but not high military office – required to maintain democracy. Worked until it didn’t.

Windows Live Mail re-patched

Dear Jerry,
It appears that Microsoft partially/mostly fixed the Windows Live Mail crash that they introduced with the KB3093594 patch. The following InfoWorld article has the details.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3016851/microsoft-windows/microsoft-reissues-botched-windows-live-mail-2012-patch-kb-3093594.html?nsdr=true
Regards,
P Brooks

Your upcoming IQ essay – food for thought

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Please see the historical attachment on military aptitude testing. I hope it may assist you with your IQ essay.

Personal Anecdote: Back in 1984, I was a Lieutenant Naval Aviator (P-3 Orion pilot) just coming off my first tour of duty in Hawaii. (We defended against the Pacific Theater sub threat from the Russkies at the end of the Cold war.) I was posted for a three year tour in Navy Officer Recruiting for Officers in Hyattsville Md.
I tested hundreds of applicants using the methods in the attached document. I remember best the AQT/FAR portion which tested for general intelligence and flight aptitude. These and other tests (about four hours) were rolled up into a final “score” from 20-80.

I was charged with attaining quotas, especially minority quotas, for general officer recruiting and Navy flight school. One of my applicants was a young black male with a 4.0 average in physics (verified from transcripts) from Morgan State University, a predominantly black college in Maryland. This young man, who presented well and really wanted to be a pilot, scored the minimum – 20 – on the combined final scoring. No other applicant during the time I was a recruiter scored so low. I can’t seen to remember anyone scoring less than about 40. I was crushed to have to pass on the news to this kid.

From this single data point, I drew a conclusion: Black colleges were not serving their students in getting a degree that mattered to anyone outside the black community. I hope they are doing better 30 years later.

I look forward to reading your essay.

Merry Christmas, Joe

project Loon

the statement was made by a commenter that cell towers are cheap
that depends where you put them. you also need to get power and data signals to the tower.
you also need a LOT of towers to cover the same area that one balloon can cover.
It’s also a LOT harder for people on the ground to damage a balloon. In many parts of the world (including parts of the US), a vacant house will have the pipes ripped from it’s walls to be sold for scrap by poor locals.
cell towers work where there is a high enough density of people and the locals are going to leave it alone.
I’m not saying that balloons don’t have problems themselves, but they are a very different set of problems.
David Lang

: The billion-dollar robot question — how can we make sure they’re safe?

Will the robot car protect me from a cop having a bad day? I grew up watching Dragnet and Adam 12 and really respect the cops I watched on those shows. I’m wondering if the robots from “the day the earth stood still” could prevent individual, group and state violence. Of course they could modified by people seeking power. Maybe the robot car should save the children if I’m driving recklessly.

How to hack any Linux machine just using backspace (ZD)

A rather embarrassing bug has been discovered which allows anyone to break into a Linux machine with ease.

By Charlie Osborne for Zero Day | December 21, 2015 — 08:44 GMT (00:44 PST) | 

If you press the backspace key 28 times on a locked-down Linux machine you want to access, a Grub2 bootloader flaw will allow you to break through password protection and wreck havoc in the system.

Researchers Hector Marco and Ismael Ripoll from the Cybersecurity Group at Universitat Politècnica de València recently discovered the vulnerability within GRUB, the bootloader used by most Linux distros.

As reported by PC World, the bootloader is used to initialize a Linux system at start and uses a password management system to protect boot entries — which not only prevents tampering but also can be used to disable peripheries such as CD-ROMs and USB ports.

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

Chaos Manor View, Friday, December 18, 2015

“This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Barrack Obama

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

“White House Declares Total Victory Over GOP in Budget Battle.” Washington Times

Republicans ‘rein in’ the IRS in new budget after years of grievances

Washington Post

The establishment Republicans have given up the power of the purse, which was the Constitution’s main check and balance mechanism against the executive power. They have been so fearful of Obama’s threat to hold his breath – shut down the government – if he does not get what he wants that they gave him “total victory”, albeit with a few bones tossed to the establishment. Despite majorities in both Houses and thus total control over spending, the Republicans have passed a budget that the White House can claim to be total victory. It’s depressing even if it was predictable.

There Will Be War Volume Ten will be on Amazon Monday. We will see where it goes from there. There is already a campaign to boycott the book on the grounds that the publisher is a scoundrel. This is apparently something to do with fan politics and awards. I can only say that it has been a pleasant experience to work with them. I have all the editorial decisions, of course including story choices, and they do all the paper work including paying the contributors. No other publisher was willing to do that. I am not involved in award politics and have not been since Lucifer’s Hammer. More importantly I am not able to handle payments to twenty people (actually far more than that; the series, twenty-five years old, was not interesting to any publishers when I got the offer to publish it again, and the first nine volumes of There Will Be War (well, the first four; the others are coming out over time) did well enough that they made an offer for me to edit a tenth volume. I find them very competent and helpful; payment from Europe has been a bit tricky but the problems seem to have been solved and the contributors received advances on non-exclusive rights, which is a bit like finding the money in the street for those whose stories have already been in print. We also have some good stuff from new authors, who apparently prefer to be in this book rather than in the traditional magazines; I’m a bit flattered. Anyway it’s done. If you like war stories you will like this book. Now on to Avalon.

Went to a neighborhood party with people we see often as we take our daily walks. One was a man we met the first day we lived here. We watched their children grow up. It involved a walk of about a block, in the dark, this being just three days before Winterset. I used the Rollator walker that I tend to use if I’m going to be out on the streets; it was my first time using it to go to a private house. Bit clumsy getting up two steps to get in and worse getting down them to get out, but all went well and we had a good time. It’s almost exactly a year since my stroke.

I need to do a full essay on IQ. I know quite a lot about it, at least what was known back when I was in graduate school, and what you can and can’t predict from individual IQ scores; and of course what you can reliably predict about groups from IQ scores. I’ve sort of stopped talking about it lately because it always starts a storm, and I’m a bit weary of the same arguments over and over again.

I learned that IQ was the best single predictor of “success” so long as you define success in any reasonable manner. You must have an objective and reliable measure of “success” (actually that would be part of my definition of rational) and you must have a reliable and well known IQ test. Lately just saying that much produces a storm of protest, but not much data; the data seem to support the validity of IQ being the best single predictor. Of course you must understand that “best” often leaves a lot of room for error, which is why IQ works so much better predicting group averages than individual performance.

Comes now Garret Jones with Hive Mind http://www.amazon.com/Hive-Mind-Your-Nation%C2%92s-Matters/dp/0804785961?tag=chaosmanor-20 . Jones is an economist and deals with numbers; he doesn’t purport to understand IQ in any professional way. The WSJ reviewer of his book says “To Fight Poverty, Raise IQ Scores” which is perhaps much like saying “to become a successful author, write a best seller”. It’s true enough but how to do it?

And that’s what I need to do an essay on; because Jones confirms what I learned in graduate school: “Smarter people, on average, are more patient and interested in saving. And indeed national savings rates correlate with IQ scores.” The reviewer, Nicholas Wade, a long time science writer, continues “There is something dismaying about the possibility that a single number, like an IQ score, could reveal anything significant about an individual’s character or potential. And maybe IQ scores don’t say much about any particular individual. But, as averages, they do measure something significant about groups of individuals, correlating quite well, for instance, with income.”

So an economist finds what psychologists have always known, and what Richard Lynn, Professor of Psychology, and Tatu Vanhanen, Professor of Political Science claimed in their hard to find and very expensive book IQ And The Wealth of Nations. IQ measures something important and you ignore it at your peril. Now I spent two years in graduate school working on that hypothesis, so I would be expected to have that conclusion; but Johnson has data.

It’s late and I have to get to bed; I’ll expand on this another time. I’m pleased to have good evidence that despite the US Courts which forbid use of IQ in most uses, it’s important , worth studying, and cannot be ignored. I knew that all along.

Still yet more on democracy…

It is said that the problem with democracy is that the people will vote themselves ever-larger government benefits and bankrupt the society. This is, of course, false. Just look at what is going on in the United States today: Wall Street is being given trillions of dollars in subsidies while little people get zero percent interest on their savings, and pensions and social security are set to be ravaged to help pay for this largesse to the plutocrats. A mandatory private health system was enacted that will radically increase the profits of for-profit insurance companies while the average person faces costs so high that they cannot actually afford to use their insurance. Trillions of dollars are spent in wars whose only obvious point is to enrich politically connected defense contractors, while roads and bridges in this country are allowed to fall apart. The borders are being thrown open to massive third-world immigration so that wages for the many can be driven down and profits for the few driven up. None of these things are happening because the people themselves want them.
No, the problem with democracy is that it is so easy for the rich to bribe elected representatives, and use the government to steal from the people. People vote for a candidate who says one thing, and after being elected, they do what they have secretly promised their wealthy patrons.
What do I think of direct ‘mob rule’ democracy? I think that it might be a good thing (Switzerland anyone?). Or at least, not as bad as rule by kleptocracy masquerading as democracy.
So why do we have a representational democracy? I think the problem is information. In a large and complex society, it is impossible for any single private citizen to be up on all the details of all the issues facing the society (especially if they have a day job). So they have to delegate political power to elected representatives, and therein begins the rot, because these representatives can be so easily bribed.. Same with the press: no single human being can evaluate all the information directly, they must have journalists to research and condense the issues for them: and these journalists can be, and increasingly are, bought and paid for by large corporate conglomerates.
And if I had a good solution for this I’d be king. I would only say that pretty near any system can be made to work, sort of, if the elites have a sense of honor and duty to the nation as a whole. And there is no system that cannot be corrupted if the elites care only for themselves.
Didn’t you once have a novel where you said that the elites had to participate in long boring formal ceremonies, to remind them of their connection with and duty to their nation? Have we lost something recently?

TG

Cicero said that the problem with democracy was it prevented able men from rising to the top. Aristocracy was better, but the ruling families become corrupt. Monarchy puts too much power in one man. The object is to establish a Republic, which has elements of all three. The Framers in Philadelphia during that hot summer of 1787 were well aware of Cicero as well as his predecessors and successors; and attempted to build that. They left many questions to the States, They were well aware that individually they would be conquered without a national union, but it was impossible to get them to agree on a single government. Seven of them had by law established religions, with state enforcement and taxes; the First Amendment has such curious language precisely to keep Congress from disestablishing the State religions. The last one vanished by state action not long before the Civil War. E Pluribus Unum.

Adam Smith warns us that whenever capitalists get together they scheme to get the government to pass laws favoring them; in particular to make it difficult for newcomers to enter their particular business. Massive government regulation, requiring experts to tell you how to comply with the law, serve that purpose nicely. Then there are government subsidies to various industries and firms. There is regulation of prices, keeping them high. There are bunny inspectors whose job is to see that no one sells rabbits without a license – and that stage magicians have a Federal license to use rabbits in shows.

This sort of crony capitalism was precisely what the limits on Federal Power were attempting to prevent. Individual states might be corrupt, but the general government would not be; it had not enough power.

If you believe that populations will not vote themselves largesse from the public treasury I suspect your education in history has not been great. Certainly regulators are bribed all the time, but so are legislators for favoring special interest groups – including public service unions. The hostility of the teachers unions to charter schools even when it is shown that the students are generally better off by the new arrangements, is well known. At onetime school districts were small, and relatively autonomous. Some were corrupt; most were not. As districts consolidated and the federal government became involved, more money was spent, but centrally; it is a matter of debate as to whether all that money was used wisely; if indeed the students learn more now than they did in times past.

The Swiss Confederacy has retained far more power in the Cantons, but it did have one Federal Power: universal military conscription and half a lifetime in the reserve army. It is generally conceded that the Swiss system works well for the Helvetian Confederacy; whether it could be expanded to all of Europe, or transplanted to the United States, is doubtful.

Republics fall. This one has lasted longer than most. Whether it remains a Republic now can be debated.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/major-ai-advance-could-have-big-implications-for-enterprise-software/

Major AI advance could have big implications for enterprise software (ZD)

Beyond recognizing handwritten characters, the software also drew its own as part of a visual Turing Test. Most of the judges weren’t able to tell the characters were drawn by a machine.

By Chris Kanaracus for Constellation Research | December 18, 2015 — 12:41 GMT (04:41 PST) | 

Ideas advanced in an AI (artificial intelligence) program newly unveiled this week could have big implications over time for enterprise software. Here are the details from MIT’s Technology Review:

Taking inspiration from the way humans seem to learn, scientists have created AI software capable of picking up new knowledge in a far more efficient and sophisticated way.

The new AI program can recognize a handwritten character about as accurately as a human can, after seeing just a single example. The best existing machine-learning algorithms, which employ a technique called deep learning, need to see many thousands of examples of a handwritten character in order to learn the difference between an A and a Z.

The software was developed by Brendan Lake, a researcher at New York University, together with Ruslan Salakhutdinov, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Toronto, and Joshua Tenenbaum, a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. Details of the program, and the ideas behind it, are published today in the journal Science.

The researchers used a technique they call the Bayesian program learning framework, or BPL. Essentially, the software generates a unique program for every character using strokes of an imaginary pen. A probabilistic programming technique is then used to match a program to a particular character, or to generate a new program for an unfamiliar one. The software is not mimicking the way children acquire the ability to read and write but, rather, the way adults, who already know how, learn to recognize and re-create new characters.

Humans Are Slamming Into Driverless Cars and Exposing a Key Flaw – Bloomberg Business

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-18/humans-are-slamming-into-driverless-cars-and-exposing-a-key-flaw

“If you program them to not follow the law, how much do you let them break the law?”

<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-18/humans-are-slamming-into-driverless-cars-and-exposing-a-key-flaw>

A key question for robot cars.

Dear Dr. Pournelle, 

As you have discussed, one of the difficulties in assessing climate science is properly collecting data for it; this article claims that faulty site location is exaggerating warming trends in the US.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/17/exclusive-noaa-relies-on-compromised-thermometers-that-inflate-u-s-warming-trend/
I present it for your perusal. Perhaps if you have some NOAA readers in the audience they might wish to clarify the matter. 

Respectfully, 

Brian P.

As a comment on an article about Google using airships to further communication in India, and the Indian Government being reluctant, (A Potential Blow to Google’s Project Loon: Indian Official Throws Water on Internet Balloons

Project Loon, Google’s pie-in-the-sky plan to blanket the globe with Internet through a chain of balloons floating in the stratosphere, is getting some traction. The Google X project recently signed deals in Sri Lanka, a small country, and Indonesia, a much larger one, for early testing. In Indonesia, the deal involved three telcos, which will share their spectrum with Loon to deliver network coverage.)

I said

One is led to wonder if baksheesh is the answer…  Of course that is a very politically incorrect thing to say.  Assume I didn’t mean it.

And got the reply

A Potential Blow to Google’s Prrecode)

Hi, Jerry —

Interesting. I wonder why Google isn’t using tried-and-true technology to accomplish the same thing. Cell towers are easy to build, and India certainly has satellite launch capability; why rely on balloons, which are vulnerable to weather change and have a tendency to snap their tethers and go wandering? And one one think people in Kashmir would be fretful about balloons or blimps over their territory. Any idea what the logic behind this is?

— Allen

I see your point, and I don’t know. Satellites are expensive and need maintenance; doubtless air ships are cheaper.  I have not taken a serious look at airship operations in decades; have you?

Rhine valley. I wouldn’t mind doing one of those.

That’s a different thing, though, from what we apparently have here, which sounds like a civilian variation on the unmanned EWS balloons that the Air Force has been experimenting with lately (like the one that snapped its tether last summer above Maryland and went drifting over the countryside before sharpshooters managed to bring it down). From a conversation I once had with a hot-air balloon pilot, I gather these things are hard to control. Once they’re aloft, even a moderate breeze can produce a pendulum effect that sends them rocking back and forth. Hardly what I’d call a stable platform for cellular communications.

Yeah, you’re right: balloons are cheaper than satellites. Maybe that’s the rationale. But hardly foolproof. Remember the scene with the lost barrage balloon in the movie Hope And Glory? (And if you’ve never seen that film, by all means, rent it and watch it…highly recommended!).

— Allen

It’s an interesting topic.

Dear Dr. Pournelle, 

First of all, allow me to express my condolences for your daughter’s accident while riding a horse. I hope she recovers well! Also, congratulations on getting out “There will be war”. I look forward to reading it.  

Unfortunately, I write with bad news: It seems the “Dyson sphere” we thought we had detected was actually a comet swarm. Maybe next time! 

http://www.iflscience.com/space/there-definitely-no-intellligent-life-around-alien-megastructure-star

Respectfully, 

Brian P.

We’re all sad. Stephanie and Jim are convinced it’s comets, which is good enough for me. They would like it to be something different. Thanks for the kind words.

On War: Worth Your Time

This is a good read:

<.>

Declared war identified the enemy, brought full mobilization of all the national assets for the duration and included central command of the economy with price controls, rationing, conscription and funding through war bonds. It was old-fashioned, big war that employed the operational art, and U.S. tactics conformed to our notions of national ideals, culture and honor.

If we no longer practice big declared war, what are we doing instead and how is that working out for us? How did we devolve from old fashioned war to today’s persistent conflict? How will America use its military power in the future?

</>

http://ciceromagazine.com/opinion/war-is-extinct-and-we-miss-it-part-1-what-happened-to-war/

The more I read of this article, the more it is clear to me this country subsists with an unacceptable state of readiness and, frankly, I don’t see much use for most of the people I see on TV other than cannon fodder. What else can we do with the “campus safespace” kids who are offended by Woodrow Wilson and want a “home” rather than an “education”? What use are they in war other than cannon fodder? If they can’t be challenged intellectually, how will they ever demonstrate physical courage?

Consider the number of prescriptions from mental health drugs in this country. Consider the high school drop-out rate. Consider the obesity rates. Look at how even the slightest things offend people to the point of infantile catharsis that always seems to go viral in the schizoid collectives that indulge in these grotesque acts of self-abasement. We’re going to war with these losers? And we think we’re going to win? Yeah, nobody wants to hear it because they all know someone I’m describing and I’m an “evil” man for talking so “hurtfully” about these “unique snowflakes”, but we’re in a lot of trouble.. And if we don’t quit trying to be a bunch of creeps and get our act together, we’ll have more than hurt feelings and broken ideals to worry about.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

: Secretary of the Navy issued a mid-course correction,

The Title, “SECDEF Carter Directs Navy to Cut Littoral Combat Ship Program to 40 Hulls, Single Shipbuilder” might be better phrased, “SECDEF tears the Navy a new one!”

While budget disagreements inside the Pentagon are common the tone and language of Carter’s memo directed at Mabus – who has led the Department of the Navy since 2009 – was unusually stringent.

http://news.usni.org/2015/12/16/secdef-carter-directs-navy-to-cut-littoral-combat-ship-program-to-40-hulls-single-shipbuilder

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

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, December 15, 2015

I sent the last of There Will Be War Volume Ten off this evening; they tell me the book, which has mostly been proof-read already, will be up on Amazon perhaps as early as Friday. There are some rewards for ordering it on the first day, so watch for it. I should have more time for this place now. My priorities are, work on the Avalon novel with Niven and Barnes for at least a week, doing a pass—that is, reading everything we have, and adding what I have to to make it a coherent text. Niven then goes in and adds the magic that only he can do; I’ll have taken care of technical stuff and making sure the plot is advancing at the right pace, moving expository lumps into other scenes so that it’s more readable.

That should finish part one, and the clocks will mostly be wound. Some of it stuff I do and Niven and Barnes usually don’t, like big cast scenes; I have already told Barnes to introduce all the characters he needs, so I don’t have to do much to bring them on stage for the big cast scenes. You can’t introduce everyone at once, or you can but it’s a lot of work to keep people reading while you do, and I see I’m getting too technical here so I’ll stop. Anyway, Avalon gets my attention for a while. Before the end of the year I’ll be done; the next job is LisaBetta, a near future novel of asteroid mines and colonies, a well advanced Artificial Intelligence, and the teenage girl the AI must take care of, in an age of bureaucracy on Earth. John DeChancie has about 45,000 words; I’ll take a full pass, add text and notes, and with luck we’ll have a book by spring. And in mid January I ought to be able to get back to Mamelukes; it’s at 160,000 words, and needs a battle, and about three major scenes; I don’t know how long that takes. But I sport of know where all the major characters – there are a lot of them – will be, assuming they survive the coming battle. That may not be easy for some of them. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

Anyway, I’m done with There Will Be War, Volume Ten, the first new anthology in that series since the early 90’s; over 120,000 words of very readable stories including a masterpiece by Poul Anderson, a Benford, a Niven, and some exciting stories by newer writers, ranging from bio warfare to piracy in the asteroids to interstellar war. There’s poetry, and articles about directed energy weapons by Doug Beeson, former Chief Scientist of Space Command; and a serious analysis of Fleet Structure for the Navy, previously published by the US Naval Institute, by Commander Phillip Pournelle. And as they say, much, much more. I am very sure you’ll like it.

 

My daughter is still in hospital following her equine accident, but she has been moved from Intensive Care, and most of the tubes have been removed. I hope to SKYPE with her next week. Her Kindle Fire was stolen recently, but she should have a new one by today, tomorrow for sure.  Now I have to think of an appropriate Christmas present. Not something having to do with horses…

I saw most of the debates. No one won. But Trump looks better; he has learned self control. One tends to forget that he’s not been in politics and this is his first political debate. Carly Fiorina came across as perhaps the best prepared, and she certainly seems to know what she’s talking about. Trump was pounded for not being specific, but that’s nuts: Presidents shouldn’t be wonks, they should know what they want. We know Trump can get very complex jobs like building resorts, office buildings, and casinos constructed and opened up; one presumes he knows how to listen to advisors, else he’s never have made the money to finance his campaign, And no, this is not an endorsement; merely an observation.

 

‘For one, most insurance policies have an exclusion that says the insurance company will not pay for claims caused by “acts of terrorism.”’

<http://securitydebrief.com/2015/12/14/calling-san-bernardino-shooting-terrorism-is-a-big-deal/>

This post is essentially self-promotion, and I don’t agree with the positive comments in re President Obama, but it contains important information about insurance exclusions for acts of terrorism – and a reminder of the insanity of not classifying the Boston Marathon bombings as terrorism.

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

So the President calling it “terrorism” (but not Islamic terrorism) is a big deal indeed.

: IC Review Finds TS Emails in Clinton’s Box

Well, the State Department tried to tell the world the Intelligence Community made a mistake in its classification procedures, and most of us scoffed. And, now we scoff again:

<.>

EXCLUSIVE: An intelligence community review has re-affirmed that two classified emails were indeed “top secret” when they hit Hillary Clinton’s unsecured personal server despite a challenge to that designation by the State Department, according to two sources familiar with the review.

The sources described the dispute over whether the two emails were classified at the highest level as a “settled matter.”

The agencies that owned and originated that intelligence – the CIA and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency or NGA – reviewed the emails to determine how they should be properly stored, as the State Department took issue with their highly classified nature. The subject matter of the messages is widely reported to be the movement of North Korean missiles and a drone strike. A top secret designation requires the highest level of security, and can include the use of an approved safe.

The sources, who were not authorized to speak on the record, told Fox News that while the emails were indeed “top secret” when they hit Clinton’s server, one of them remains “top secret” to this day — and must be handled at the highest security level. The second email is still considered classified but at the lower “secret” level because more information is publicly available about the event.

</>

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/12/15/sources-review-affirms-clinton-server-emails-were-top-secret-despite-department-challenge.html

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Trump must be aware of this; he said in the debates “if Hillary is allowed to run”. Others said do you mean the emails but he didn’t answer. I suspect he’s worried that she will go to jail; he’s sure he can beat her.

Democracy, Middle-Class Rule, and the Middle East

Jerry,

I’ve had a massively politically incorrect thought bouncing around in my head for a while. It seem timely. It concerns our progressive political elite’s unthinking fetish for unqualified “democracy”.

Our self-appointed betters have made a complete bloody hash of the Middle East by blindly pursuing their gross ideological misconception of what makes for stable prosperous states. Short version of their error:

A democracy is no better than its electorate.

My take is, what actually makes for the stable prosperous societies many in the West currently take WAY too much for granted is middle-class rule, not democracy per se, with “middle class” defined as those who tend to plan for their next generation, not just for their next week.

Consider the US, where the vote was originally pretty much restricted to settled property owners, and the Founders agreed “there never was a democracy that didn’t commit suicide.” We continued to do OK as the franchise was expanded for so long as this coincided with the expansion of a reasonably informed and forethoughtful middle class. Now that we’ve spent a couple generations simultaneously destroying our educational system and insisting that anyone who draws breath (and many who don’t) should vote, things are getting a bit dicey.

Or consider South Korea, which attained prosperity while ruled by various autocrats, and only became a stable democracy after it had a solid middle-class majority. I submit that what those autocrats had in common was that they largely ruled on behalf of their middle classes, fostering these to the point where they became the majority. Another example, Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore. Or Turkey, up until Erdogan…

But then there’s much of post-colonial Africa, with tiny middle classes overlaid on large tribal majorities, the birthplace of “one man, one vote – once” kleptocracies. There are fortunate competently-ruled exceptions here and there, but democracy sure hasn’t done a lot of good for most of those places.

Which brings us to the Middle East, the “Arab Spring”, and ensuing Western political-class idiocy.

The “Arab Spring” was a middle-class revolt, yes, against various local autocratic strongmen, but largely in places where the middle class was a minority. The place it worked out best was Tunisia where it started, which actually does have something resembling a middle-class majority.

In Libya and Egypt and Syria, not so much. Egypt, as you’ve pointed out, was fortunate enough to have a deeply established Army behind the strong-man we insisted step down for democratic elections, an Army to boot the majority Islamists back out afterwards and resume something with at least elements of pro middle-class rule. Libya and Syria were not so fortunate; Libya’s (unsavory, yes) ruling establishment crumbled entirely under Western pressure, and Syria’s (see Libya) partially, with results the locals – and we too – will be paying for for generations.

My take? Our primary interest in places with a majority of tribal fanatics is that they have stable governments that prevent the fanatics from organizing attacks on us. If we can then over time steer those governments toward fostering local middle-class majorities, great!

Then, and only then, start pressuring them to adopt democratic forms.

Otherwise, we end up with anything from tribal anarchic chaos (Libya) to one-man one-vote once regimes of islamists (Iran, and almost Egypt, and step-by-step Turkey) to the Islamic State’s emergence from Syria’s chaos and Iraq’s disaffected west.

“B-b-but you’re against DEMOCRACY!” they shriek in horror. Well, no, it has its place, once the locals are ready for it. Which is massively culturally judgmental, who do I think I AM, yadda yadda.

Which is, since I have plenty of other work to do without the huge distraction that vilification-fest would involve, why I sign myself

Porkypine

Democracy, Middle-Class Rule, and the Middle East

Jerry,

Did I mention “timely”? Ted Cruz, speaking today at the Heritage Foundation, just went there too regarding our progressive political elite’s disastrous fetish for democracy uber alles. Better organized and in more detail than my letter of yesterday, and with less emphasis on the long-term good of the locals involved, though he does mention that in passing. He focuses more on the immediate vital interests of the US, not unreasonable in a campaign speech for the Presidency.

The speech is up online now, at

http://www.c-span.org/video/?401882-1/radio-ted-cruz-remarks-national-security

I’ll be interested to see in the coming days if the usual suspects attack him over this, or attempt to ignore it away. This is a discussion the country very much needs to have. Listen to the speech.

Porkypine

The Framers were quite explicit: there never was a Democracy that did not commit suicide, 

: Islam, the Religion of “Peace?”

Jerry,

In the aftermath of the San Bernardino Islamic Terrorist Attack we are seeing paraphrases of Verse 5.32 of the Koran in an attempt to mislead us into believing that Islam is the Religion of “Peace.”

“Whoever kills a soul kills all humanity” was a paraphrase of 5.32 that appeared in a photo caption in the 12/14/2015 Los Angeles Times.

This paraphrase seems to be far from complete and, of course, conveniently omits the definition of what a soul might be. We should be warned that a soul in this context would be a believer in Islam and that non-believers are fair game!

Islam that follows Sharia and strict interpretation of the Koran has NO Place in the Modern World and is a mortal threat to all who do not accept it.

Any actions that are planned against ISIS need to be based on the above.

Bob Holmes

Migration with no intent to assimilate is invasion. Muslims cannot assimilate and obey Sharia; that is their dilemma.

: Decline and Fall of the Republic

Barrack Hussein Obama continues to preside over the fall of the Republic:

<.>

The American navy’s newest ship, launched with great fanfare less than a month ago, has broken down at sea and had to be towed to land.

The USS Milwaukee, a vast, futuristic-looking beast, suffered an engineering problem while en route from Halifax, Canada, to Mayport in Florida. From Florida it was due to travel on to its home port of San Diego.

But the ship, commissioned on November 21, suffered problems on Friday.

The Navy Times said that initial reports suggest fine metal debris collected in the lube oil filter, causing the system to shut down.

“Reporting of a complete loss of propulsion on USS Milwaukee is deeply alarming, particularly given this ship was commissioned just 20 days ago,” said John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

</>

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/12050630/Americas-newest-battleship-breaks-down-at-sea-after-20-days.html

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

That is bad management, and you would hope the President can improve it, but can you really blame it on the President? The Senate had to approve his officials…

Today’s little oddity

And an oddity for today:

http://www.covergirl.com/cosmetics/starwars-collection

Featuring:

STAR WARS LIMITED EDITION SUPER SIZER MASCARA – THE DARK SIDE

STAR WARS LIMITED EDITION SUPER SIZER WATERPROOF MASCARA – THE LIGHT SIDE

Product placement gone WAAY too far.

Jim

Re: Why are Apple MacBooks more reliable? (ZD)

I detest Apple’s politics, I dislike their walled-garden approach to software, I wouldn’t use their bookstore if someone else was paying for the books…

…but in the years since I switched from Windows systems to the first OSX Mac systems, I have lost my writing ONCE.

And that was when my Mac copy of Word crashed, and the Mac asked me if I would like to save the file—and because I was brand new to the OS, I clicked NO before realizing I should have clicked YES.

Compare that to all my many years on Windows systems (multiple makers, multiple versions, only one constant) where my hands did a nervous, involuntary CTRL-S twitch every couple of minutes because the Blue Screen of Death was my constant companion. And where I routinely lost work. Sometimes whole chapters. Once, a whole short story. Always, the second I let my guard down, something.

I don’t care about souping up my machines, I have no interest in digging into their innards. All I want from my computers is that they get out of my way and let me work—and don’t destroy what I’ve done.

For that, only Apple delivers.

Holly

I’ve never lost text with Mac or PC since the S-100 buss, and I write a lot; but I will agree, Macs are reliable.  At least until the battery swells up, as happened to my Air.  And I loved that Air…

 

running Windows

One option for running some version of Windows is to invest in Parallels. They provide a quite functional emulator that you can run on a Mac, so that it will pretend to be a PC, and then you can install Windows on the virtual PC. One of my copy editing clients needs me to run a TeX compiler that’s been customized in a Windows environment, so my Mac Mini (a few years old) has Parallels and a version of Windows€”I think 8, but Parallels claims to be compatible with the newer OSs, and I don’t see any reason to doubt them. It’s given me good service for several years, without any irritations other than those inherent in Windows. And it’s cheaper than having both a PC and a Mac.

William H. Stoddard

I’m all in…

…as soon as they add the fifty cal and Gen Savage is flying.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/14/aviation/windspeed-skydeck-seats-on-top-of-aircraft/index.html

Bob

http://www.zdnet.com/article/elon-musk-tech-behemoths-invest-1bn-in-open-source-ai-research/

Elon Musk, tech behemoths invest $1bn in open-source AI research (ZD)

Can open-source artificial intelligence technologies work for the greater good of humanity?

As Karl Popper showed in “The Poverty of Historicism,” you can’t predict what you’re going to know tomorrow–because if you did, you’d know it today. 

jd

Russia Flight Tests Anti-Satellite Missile – Washington Free Beacon

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-conducts-successful-flight-test-of-anti-satellite-missile/

SUBJ: Hans-Ulrich Rudel helped design the A-10

Continuing in your recent posts on the A-10. Did you know the A-10 was designed with input from Hans-Ulrich Rudel

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Ulrich_Rudel) the legendary WW2 tank-buster, the “deadliest warrior in history” (according to Jeff

Cooper) and most-decorated pilot in the Luftwaffe?

Jeff Cooper’s short story on Rudel “Kriegoberst” is a _mind-blowing_ read, but I can’t find an on-line copy to link to, dammit. It’s included in Cooper’s book _Fireworks_ for those interested.

In the 1970’s, Pierre Sprey The man who wrote the detailed specifications for the proposed A-X project (which would result in the

A-10) required all those associated with the program to read Rudel’s book _Stuka Pilot_. Later, Fairchild-Republic’s A-10 project manager flew Rudel from Germany to Fairchild-Republic’s headquarters to chair a seminar for the design team. The result speaks for itself.

See: “Luftwaffe Ace Causing Problems” By MICHAEL GETLER, “The Washington Post, BONN, West Germany, 11 Nov 1976

“A World War II German flying ace whose postwar neo-Nazi activities have landed him in the midst of a bitter political controversy here, visited Washington last month to participate with U. S. generals in the assessment of a new American jet fighter. The German officer, former Col. Hans-Ulrich Rudel, said that he went to the United States at the invitation of the U. S. Air Force to help assess the A-10, an antitank aircraft manufactured by Fairchild Industries.”

http://acesofww2.com/germany/aces/rudel/

It is no wonder the “Devil’s Cross” (as the Soviets call it) is such a deadly platform. It contains a bit of the spirit of the greatest tank killer ever.

The zoomies, as other have stated, would be happy to kill the A-10 and anything else stinking of the “A-” prefix. But a schlacht-vogel like the A-10 comes along only once in a great while. I, for one, would love to see the Army and the Marine Corps take over the Warthog. They would give the bird a better home and its drivers a better career path.

“Soldiers hate warriors. Warriors hate soldiers.” from _Once An Eagle_ by Anton Myrer

Cordially,

John

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

Chaos Manor View, Sunday, December 13, 2015

I’ve been devoured in trying to get There Will Be War Vol 10 out the door, but as I was about to finish my daughter was involved in an equestrian accident and ended in hospital and a great number of family, housing maintenance, and other things ate up all my time and energy. Nothing that a younger and more spry guy couldn’t have handled quickly, but I’m not what I used to be. I haven’t quite finished the book.

As part of it I did an interview with Larry Niven, and found that an ancient MacBook Pro – vintage, I got it before the brain cancer treatment in 2008 – with QuickTime and the built in microphone, laid on a coffee table in my living room with Niven and I sitting comfortably across from each other, recorded the interview well enough that I think I can edit it into a short audio to be used in promoting the book.

Which means that pricey as Macs are, you need to think about how long they are useful. I recently went to an Apple store and looked at the new MacBook Pro, and they are gorgeous. They are also fast; but really my old pre-2008 MacBook Pro is still good enough for most of what I use a Mac for. The new ones will do one thing, though: apparently you can record both sides of a SKYPE call quite smoothly with that gorgeous screen, and quickly edit that into an interview podcast. I don’t know if I’ll ever do that, but it’s tempting.

If you do much business you probably need Windows, and Eric is building us a new high performance Windows 10, but I admit I am tempted by the newest MacBook Pro as well. That screen is gorgeous.

Learning to use the MacBook Pro to record was itself interesting: the last time I did interviews, and it doesn’t seem that long age, I used a good quality tape recorder and expensive ,microphone; all that is upstairs where I can’t go without an expedition, and I wasn’t sure I could find it all anyway. So I Googled audio recording on a Mac. It seemed simple enough but the screens I was shown were very similar to the ones I got on the MacBook Pro, but not identical. KI knew that on a Mac everything was either very simple or impossible, and there certainly had to be a simple way to do this, and eventually I found that I just wasn’t seeing a couple of option icons on the QuickTime control (rather tiny) screen; when I realized they were there and did what the F1 Help screen said they did, even if the icon the Help showed wasn’t what I was looking at, it became simple. Moral: Macs really are simple, but you need some grounding in the Mac philosophy, and faith that with a Mac everything is very simple or impossible; and Macs pretty well do everything you expect them to; you just have to figure out the simple approach. Also, Mac Help screens actually have a use; unlike some that are there to prove they told you how but only if you already knew…

Anyway, I didn’t get much accomplished over the weekend, but I at least didn’t pile up more work. Sand I got a lot of the Christmas stuff done, on line. Sorry I have neglected this place.

Meanwhile, Eric has discovered that if you tell the ASUS Motherboard that you have liquid cooling, that makes the board think you are overclocking, and the least you can get away with is 12% overclock. Since we don’t want any overclocking at all, that’s important to know. If you use ASUS and do not want to overclock, do not tell the board that you have liquid cooling; at least that’s my interpretation. Full report from Eric coming up.

 

It’s late, I don’t have time to do comments, but here are some things to think about.

Think about this:

Microsoft’s tough love

                Apparently Microsoft really, really wants everybody using Live Mail 2012 to stop and use either the inadequate Mail app or Outlook. Early this afternoon I received this:

Dear user,

In a few weeks, we will be making some changes to our email services that might impact your @outlook.com, @hotmail, @live, or @msn email account. Those changes will prevent your email from being delivered to the Windows Live Mail 2012 application you use.

In order to continue using Windows Live Mail 2012 to send and receive email for your account, you need to install the latest update published here.

If you use Windows Live Mail 2012 on Windows 8, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, we recommend that you switch to the built in Mail app in Windows to stay connected and get the latest feature updates on Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10.

Windows Live Essentials 2009 and 2011 are not supported anymore, and you will need to update to Windows 8/8.1 or Windows 10 and use the Mail app, or use www.outlook.com. To learn more about the Mail app, please click here.

We also recommend all Windows Live Mail users on Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 to upgrade to Windows 10 and use the built in Mail application to stay connected and get the latest feature updates.

We suggest saving this email so you can refer to it later.

Thanks for your understanding and continued use.

Sincerely, The Outlook team

                I very compliantly followed the link and obtained the update. I ran it and lost the use of Live Mail 2012. Upon startup Windows would announce the program had stopped must be closed. After some frustration including a repair install I checked out the Mail app. It’s far better than it was when first introduced with Windows 8. Then it was pathetic. Now it is merely limited, more so than is acceptable for a full PC. It would be somewhat acceptable on a phone or tablet but would be a good target for a paid competitor.

                So I headed off to Outlook. My main desktop has Office 2013 but I’ve always regarded Outlook as overkill for my needs and thus drawing more resources than I cared to give it. OTOH, The average desktop is now a lot more machine for the money and Outlook hasn’t gotten all that more resource hungry. But there was a problem. Outlook 2013 doesn’t know how to import Live Mail messages. I checked the older PC on my desk’s KVM. It has Office 2010 but it too lacked the import functionality. What madness was this? Live Mails was still actively developed when that generation of Office launched. Did they not want people to move up to Outlook as they had in the past?

                I noticed that this wasn’t the first time I’d run into the lack of import options in recent Outlook generations. That Outlook 2010 had a third party utility for adding the needed import option installed but it was really clunky. Handling all of the folders would be a long tedious task. Then something occurred to me. Live Mail 2012 didn’t actually crash. Not entirely. Just the part that pulls down new messages and other items like calendar data. But the primary UI was still usable so long as you didn’t click the CLOSE button on the error box. As it turned out I could retrieve all of the account setup info and even export to a PST file. Score one for the Live Mail team, wherever they are now.

Eric Pobirs

Bandow: ‘An American who values individual liberty and advocates limited government should oppose further inflating the Washington Leviathan to “do good” elsewhere.’

<http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/no-libertarian-case-for-empire/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

How Microsoft Created a Revolution [heh] in Soviet Computing.

<http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-microsoft-created-a-revolution-in-soviet-computing>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

 

: Roy Spencer, PhD

http://www.drroyspencer.com/

Greenpeace RICO investigation and  the satellite data trend (4 posts)

 

From Mike Glyer’s File 770

 

SITH STATUARY. The BBC profile “The Man Who Turned Lenin Into Darth Vader” tells about Ukranian sculptor Alexander Milov, who got the Odessa city council to allow him to turn a Lenin statue they were threatening to melt down into a Darth Vader statue. It even has free Wi-Fi!

To create his new sculpture, Milov strengthened the original structure and added a helmet and cape made out of titanium alloy – he also inserted a Wi-Fi router in Vader’s head. Despite the statue’s apparent glibness, it serves as a reminder that we can’t control which memories last and which don’t. “I wanted to make a symbol of American pop culture which appears to be more durable than the Soviet ideal.”

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