Category Archives: View

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Physical Therapy on Monday and then I did some hard work on novels.

I had gained 18 points on abilities on whatever scoring system PT technicians use – things like able to stand for a full minute with my eyes closed, and how far I can reach without support. I tried one of those all wheel walkers, which only have brakes on the rear wheels. My goal with that would be to take long distance walks. The standard walker – two non-swiveling wheels in front, skids (tennis balls, actually) in back – works well in the house and in shopping malls and other places that have level surfaces, but Los Angeles has not done any sidewalk maintenance in fifty years, and we do like to plant trees in parking strips. When we bought our house there were two mature oak trees in front and they never cracked the sidewalk; oaks send down deep roots. But on other streets on my walking route they have magnolias, which have surface roots and are notorious sidewalk crackers. There are also plane trees and other surface root trees, very attractive but hard on sidewalks.

The result is a lot cracking, but although our winters are mild they can get cold enough that a few badly poured sidewalks can experience frost heaves; and of course there is general wear. None of this was a bother to anyone but skaters and skate boarders, but I sure notice them now with my walker; I keep hoping that the wheeled variety will work better. But my experiment in Physical Therapy was a bit ambiguous; the wheeled walker seems a bit squirrelly. My problem isn’t strength, it’s balance, which has been awful since the 2008 hard radiation brain cancer treatment – completely successful, I’m cancer free.

I walked with a cane or hiking staff before the stroke. I keep hoping to get back to that again, but I’m sure not there yet, and it looks like it’s going to be a while. I’d like to be able to walk a mile or so a day, and the wheeled walker might make it easier if I can get enough confidence in using it. I wish it had four wheel brakes. I have a good bit of confidence in the two wheel walker. Not so much in the four-wheeler.

My biggest problem remains typing, which is slow – distracting but tolerable – and inaccurate. The inaccuracy is the worst problem. I must look at the keyboard – there is no way I’m learning to be a touch typist again – and when I look up I see numbers and extra letters in words, and I seem compelled to fix them, and by then I have forgotten the end of the sentence, or what the next sentence should be. It makes writing incredibly slow,

Roberta keeps urging me to try Dragon, which I have, but I need to train my dragon – actually Dragon needs to train me – and I find it a bit daunting. So I think of stories but I get frustrated trying to write. Nothing for it but to Just Do It, of course. I’m also training my autocorrect, which is tricky; I pretty well have to stick to unambiguous words lest I make some really horrid mistakes. Still, what can mischevi9ous be? But sometimes misspelled words might be any of several, and sometimes the wrong one can be bizarre.

Michael will be over in an hour or less to complete the pickup of my car from its annual servicing – including of course a new battery from being driven infrequently. I’ll work on this, but then I have to go with him to sign the payment, and we’ll do a bit of shopping. I’m not yet up to driving, and I doubt I ever will drive at nights – octogenarians cause accidents, not being in them so much as strictly obeying the laws and not compromising the way younger people with more confidence in their reflexes do.

Roberta’s birthday dinner

We have two new candidates for President: Jeb Bush, and Donald Trump. While I hope The Donald scares the country club Republicans, and I rather think he will, I suspect he will not be able to beat Hillary, given the Clinton attack machine. He is being played by the media as the clown prince. But he’d certainly be preferable to Hillary, and for that matter to the Country Club Republicans, whoever they would choose. That, I think, will not be Jeb Bush, who, unlike his father and brother, has actual principles rather than a strategy; or so I’ve observed.

Bush II tried to be his own man, and when he was he was pretty good, but he didn’t have any overriding principles like reducing the size of government. He was far too willing to let the Big Spenders convince him that we had to spend our way out of the Great Repression; one reason Obama won the next election. Bush II didn’t really believe in TARP but he didn’t stand up against it, either; and of course he got hit with 911 and used it to unseat Saddam, largely on moral grounds – Hussein really was a monster – but without any strategic objective whatever. He wanted to undo some of the effects of his father’s mistakes, but he had no idea of what to do next.

I’ve been reading Emma Sky’s “The Unraveling” http://www.amazon.com/The-Unraveling-Hopes-Missed-Opportunities-ebook/dp/B00PSSCU2K . I always knew they were unprepared for a Mesopotamian adventure, but even I didn’t think they were that unprepared. I probably should have. Colonel Couvillon was discreet in his conversations about his experiences as Governor of Wasit Province, but it was clear that while his heart was in the right place, he had no real experience at governing; as a Marine, why should he?

Ms. Sky was a 32 year old British Council – look it up – civil servant who had been on cultural missions to Egypt and some other Arab areas, but never to Iraq; and had no executive experience at all. The British government advertised for volunteers to help rebuild Iraq. She volunteered, and within a few days was temporarily posted to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and put on an airplane to Iraq, got to Baghdad, then to Kirkuk, all without any briefings; where she was told that she was the provincial Governor, and the only civilian advisor to the American military commander. The Province was sort of given to the Brits to govern, but she had no British staff; while the US Airborne Infantry occupiers had no experience with Arabs, or with governing, or with the history of Sunni-Shia-Kurd relations, or Hussein’s Arabification of the province. She, like the Colonel, had only good intentions and common sense to guide her. So much for British Colonial Experience and expertise.

As for Bush II, he won the war. Mission accomplished. Let the State Department and the Foreign Service handle it now, with our troops to enforce our pro-consul’s decrees. And so came Bremer, a man Bush had never met, from State, to be proconsul, and the real war began.

Jeb Bush had no part in all this. He governed Florida, and did that well in frightening economic times. He stayed out of foreign affairs except for immigration, which he did better with than most. He had to avoid denouncing The Family, and did. He would make a far better President than Hillary, and in my judgment better than either his father or his brother; but he is a Bush, and Bush I fired every Reagan friend in the White House the day he took office. He is the son of the anti-Reagan; of the man who swore never to raise taxes but did so at the first opportunity. Jeb Bush can plead that government and taxes were smaller when he left the governorship than when he took it; and that he has never broken his word.

I can think of worse candidates for President than Jeb Bush; but I can think of worse candidates than Donald Trump also.

Subject: Power Re-estimate

A correspondent of yours asked, ‘did Obama let ISIS go nuclear’? That question overestimates Obama’s – and America’s – actual power. A re-invasion and re-occupation of Iraq would cost another trillion dollars, re-flood the VA and the military cemeteries, re-alienate the public in the Middle East and at home, end as messily, and leave behind even crazier fanatics.

We have learned – some of us – that an army built to defeat empires is useless against insurgencies. Given this fix, what to do? Obama’s strategy – and Clinton’s if she succeeds him – is to competently manage imperial decline. By contrast, W’s strategy – and that of any present Republican candidate, were one to win – is to incompetently hasten imperial collapse.

Paradocter

Power Re-estimate

Not true of ISIS which needs a territory to be legitimate; and we have counter insurgency techniques for the rest.  What we don’t have, and probably do not want, Is the structure for ruling without the consent of the governed.

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

Very well then, America and Isis have a common interest: that Isis has a territory for them to brag about and for America to attack. So I think that’s what will happen.
Endgame: partition Iraq. Kurdistan, Shiite rump Iraq, Sunni central Iraq. Biden suggested this years ago, but it was called an embarrassing gaffe, because it was a good idea. As is we’ll get the same result, but Isis also picks up half of Syria. A terabuck for that?
Isis will establish a reign of theocratic terror, much like theocratic terror of their former sponsors, the Saudis. For now they brag of the pious purity of their brutality, but of course once they settle in they’ll keep the brutality and corrupt the piety. (Much like their former sponsors, the Saudis.) To justify their insanity they’ll provoke the Americans. We shouldn’t take the bait, but our war industry needs wars, winnable or not.

As for ruling without the consent of the governed, don’t worry, the 1% is pioneering the necessary techniques here at home.

Paradocter

Yes, they  are; Obama with his Executive Orders and Regulatory agencies is running the experiments. Crony capitalism thrives; but is has been ever so. What needs to be preserved is freedom, and that is very much under threat from Wesley Mouch and his cohorts.

If by W you mean President George W. Bush, it should be obvious he had no strategy; just as President Barrack Hussein Obama has none. Mr. Obama had one: he made a speech in Cairo that was to change everything. It did not work, and the Arab world collapsed as it sometimes does. The current Administration, much of the time with Hillary Clinton as foreign minister, did not fare well in protecting American interests in the area; is not doing so now.

Sending a few more troops is a bit like sending twenty forest fire fighters to instruct those fighting the fire. If you are to use force, use it. If the job needs one division, send two.

As to the partition of Iraq I do not recall Mr. Biden saying that; I certainly did, before they went in, which I advised against because it was obvious that any unified Iraq would have to be a tyranny. Fortunately there is enough oil to support three nations there (with perhaps some remnants going to Syria, Turkey, and Jordan); not lavishly, but not in more poverty either.

I have no brief for intervention in territorial disputes in Europe or the Middle East; but we broke it, and it will not fix itself; and an ISIS tyranny really would be intolerable.

You ought to put this link on permanent and prominent display.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFZAAFGTioE

Robert

Yes; well done. The field Army needs close air support. The Air Force will not supply it.

: I confess that I did not know there was such a thing as a “National Week of Making.”

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 12 through June 18, 2015, as National Week of Making.

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/06/16/2015-14980/national-week-of-making-2015?utm_campaign=subscription+mailing+list&utm_medium=email&utm_source=federalregister.gov

Rod

I didn’t either…

NSA “gets back”…

http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/06/nsa-launches-revenge-porn-site/

Access options for data access range in “…price from the 50GB, $9.99/month basic package, to the expensive but popular the $199.99/year “Edward Snowden” package, which includes unlimited browsing and downloads.”

“According to early projections the website is on pace to sell nearly $1 billion in subscriptions this month alone. Due to the release of millions of e-mails and text messages detailing seedy affairs and rendezvous NSA analysts believe there will be a 81 percent increase in the divorce rate and as much as a 53 percent increase in STD and paternity test rates.”

Charles Brumbelow

Clearly satire, and not really to my taste.

Subj: Change…

is not always “good”, sometimes it’s evil.  This is no longer the country
of which I felt I was a positive part for 40 plus years.
http://nypost.com/2015/06/06/how-a-massive-silent-cultural-revolution-has-changed-america/
Remove all warning labels and let natural selection work.

Tolerance leading to acceptance is quite arguably a good thing. Forced “acceptance” as in the case of the bakers is quite another. I would go farther: I think shops should have the right to refuse service to anyone they choose, without having to state a cause. Of course that would lead to demonstrations, but so long as they are not violent that is acceptable. Then you come to individual police having to decide what demonstrations they will protect.

Dante reserved a bolgia in the ninth circle for those who sow dissent.

It is one thing to say you wish to practice your customs without interference; it is another to demand legal use of force against those who will not assist you in doing so.

Vinland is where you find it

Dear Jerry:

In the wake of  Mark Steyn’s  Heartland conference slip-up, , I reviewed the latest British Vineyard maps.

It appears that some  latter day Vikings  need not leave home to discover Vinland: wine is now  being made hundreds of miles North of the known Medieval limit of British  viticulture, the Isle of Ely:   wine is now  being made on Percy lands  at  Adderstone Vineyards, a   cold stone’s throw from Bamburgh Castle , in grimest Northumbria.

More frighteningly,  the Scots are afoot, with Dalrossach Vineyards up the Don, about halfway between Balmoral and Castle Forbes.

Rumor has it that some of this  subarctic  plonk has already been exported to California.

Best

                         Russell Seitz

I expect so; the Earth is much warmer than in 1800. I doubt they plant grapes in nova Scotia yet. But wouldn’t that be nice? Vinland Wine.

China’s South China Sea dominance is the price US pays for Iraq and Afghanistan | buffy willow

Jerry

I guess you were right again:

http://atimes.com/2015/06/chinas-south-china-sea-dominance-is-the-price-us-pays-for-iraq-and-afghanistan/

“The US is working on countermeasures, to be sure, but chronic underinvestment in cutting-edge defense R&D has left them underdeveloped and under-deployed. The Bush administration spent $1 trillion or so in Iraq and Afghanistan, mainly on personnel, and reduced defense R&D to accommodate its nation-building ambitions in the region. That was a bad trade-off. The US has little to show for its efforts . . .”

How to lose the strategy of technology. Don’t you hate when you call it right?

Ed

It’s an example if I bring out a new edition. Alas, The Strategy of Technology is forgotten by all but a few.

Subj: ISIS has enough captured radioactive material to build “dirty bomb” – UK Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isiss-dirty-bomb-jihadists-have-seized-enough-radioactive-material-to-build-their-first-wmd-10309220.html

Lurching Toward War? or New Cold War?

Jerry,

Tsars do not think like we do. I fear our leaders do not understand that. This may not bode well…

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAKBN0OV17A20150615?sp=true&utm_content=buffere3dd1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer>

Russia says will retaliate if U.S. weapons stationed on its borders

Mon Jun 15, 2015 2:39pm EDT

By Gabriela Baczynska and Wiktor Szary

MOSCOW/WARSAW (Reuters) – A plan by Washington to station tanks and heavy weapons in NATO states on Russia’s border would be the most aggressive U.S. act since the Cold War, and Moscow would retaliate by beefing up its own forces, a Russian defense official said on Monday.

The United States is offering to store military equipment on allies’ territory in eastern Europe, a proposal aimed at reassuring governments worried that after the conflict in Ukraine, they could be the Kremlin’s next target.

Poland and the Baltic states, where officials say privately they have been frustrated the NATO alliance has not taken more decisive steps to deter Russia, welcomed the decision by Washington to take the lead.

But others in the region were more cautious, fearing their countries could be caught in the middle of a new arms race between Russia and the United States.

“If heavy U.S. military equipment, including tanks, artillery batteries and other equipment really does turn up in countries in eastern Europe and the Baltics, that will be the most aggressive step by the Pentagon and NATO since the Cold War,” Russian defense ministry official General Yuri Yakubov said.

“Russia will have no option but to build up its forces and resources on the Western strategic front,” Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

He said the Russian response was likely to include speeding up the deployment of Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania, and beefing up Russian forces in ex-Soviet Belarus.

“Our hands are completely free to organize retaliatory steps to strengthen our Western frontiers,” Yakubov said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said: “We hope that reason will prevail and the situation in Europe will be prevented from sliding into a new military confrontation which may have dangerous consequences….”

The current administration wants a reset with Russia – and it looks like the Clinton-Albright reset from the Balkan Wars. The Neocons are not much better. And we have no SAC, and missile officer is not a career advancing post.

EWO. EWO. Emergency War Orders. Emergency War Orders. I have a massage in five parts. Message Begins. Tango X-ray Foxtrot…

Weather Service retiree defined his own post-retirement consulting job 

Dr. P,

For some reason, this tale reminds me of Lazarus Long’s comment about being a shaman – “it’s lovely work if you can stomach it”:

Top Weather Service official creates consulting job — then takes it himself with $43,200 raise, watchdog says

By Lisa Rein June 5

A senior National Weather Service official helped write the job description and set the salary for his own post-retirement consulting post– then came back to the office doing the same job with a $43,200 raise, the agency’s watchdog found.

The deputy chief financial officer also demanded that he be paid a $50,000 housing allowance near Weather Service headquarters in downtown Silver Spring in violation of government rules for contractors, one of numerous improprieties in a revolving-door deal sealed with full knowledge of senior agency leaders, according to an investigation by the Commerce Department inspector general’s office…

By the time he was fired 21 months later, the government had paid him another $471,875.34…

During an interview with investigators about the case, a high-ranking Weather Service official wondered aloud, “why we have all these people that retire and then we go and hire them to come back,” the inspector general said. The contracting official who helped arrange the deal told investigators that similar arrangements “happen all the time” at NOAA  — but the contracting staff did not “question or at least more closely scrutinize this arrangement,” the report said…

[His lawyer, Matthew]Kaiser said the agency’s contracting officials approved the deal, relieving his client of responsibility for wrongdoing.

“That a long-time distinguished public servant can have his name dragged through the mud for following the advice of his boss and his agency’s compliance officials should be absolutely terrifying for every federal employee at an agency with an overly aggressive inspector general,” Kaiser said.

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/06/05/top-weather-service-official-creates-consulting-job-then-takes-it-himself-with-43200-raise-watchdog-says/>

Kind of makes you want to transfer some rogue bunny inspectors to the Inspector General’s office, doesn’t it?

Regards,
    William Clardy

“The faster I run, the behinder I get!”– Pogo

Well, we still have bunny inspectors; some approach retirement…

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/bunny-inspectors-again/

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/1254778-the-debate-over-the-budget-continues

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

Chaos Manor View, Sunday, June 14, 2015

Roberta’s Birthday

Happy Birthday!

Flag Day

Today is Roberta’s birthday.  Yesterday we went to Costco and got the earphones tuned, which seems to work better in some ways – less background noise —  and not so good in others.  I have ordered a gizmo that feeds the input from an external microphone directly into the hearing aids. We’ll see how useful that is. I heard most of the table conversation at breakfast this morning, and even some of the Lessons, but it needs improving.

Something else that needs improving is mu typing skill.  I am probably converting to hunt and peck two finger typing and even that is  slow and sloppy, every sentence no matter how carefully typed requiring a half dozen corrections, causing a very big slowdown.  It may be getting better, but it’s slow. One danged thing is hitting a key, Id guess ALT and some other, maybe A, that stops the process until I use the blasted mouse to move the cursor back to the end of the line and click; I cannot ignore it and fix later as I try to do with words that have numbers or extraneous letters in them.   But I am slowly learning to produce text.  After all four pages a day is at least two books a year, as I once told David Drake. And auto correct works in Word pretty well, although not so good in Live Writer.

More later.  We’re having a birthday party.

Mom, Alex, and Frank out on the front patio.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/06/12/smartphone-thefts-are-way-down-heres-why/

Smartphone thefts are way down. Here’s why. (WP)

By Thad Moore June 12 at 9:28 AM

It’s a tough time to be in the business of stealing smartphones.

Apple started letting users clear their data and disable their iPhones remotely in 2013 with its “Find My iPhone” feature, and Android is expected to roll out the function soon. That makes it harder for thieves to do much with a stolen smartphone: If it doesn’t work, it’s not worth an awful lot on the black market.

Now, that technology appears to be turning away would-be thieves: A third fewer Americans say they had phones stolen last year compared to 2013, according to a Consumer Reports study released Thursday.

An estimated 2.1 million Americans had their phones stolen last year, down from 3.1 million in 2013.

The magazine says it tweaked its methodology in the latest study, which could account for some of the change, but that the overall change is still significant.

That’s what prosecutors and policymakers hoped for as they’ve pushed for so-called “kill switches” to become standard in smartphones. The issue has inspired legislation in Congress (though it hasn’t moved out of committee) and laws in states such as Minnesota and California, particularly as phone thefts soared in recent years. The number of Americans whose phones were stolen doubled between 2012 and 2013, according to the magazine.

Those laws concerned privacy activists, who said kill switches could be used improperly, especially if wiping a stolen phone becomes compulsory. They worry that law enforcement agencies, for example, could abuse such features when targeting a suspect.

In a statement, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said his office planned to keep pushing phone makers to make the technology standard.

“This new report confirms what our office found earlier this year: the introduction of ‘kill switches’ in cell phones – resulting from pressure brought by my office, the San Francisco DA, and countless law enforcement officials and consumer advocates who joined the coalition – led to a staggering drop in smartphone thefts,” Schneiderman said in a statement.

Kill switch advocates like Schneiderman will be eyeing Android’s new Lollipop 5.1 operating system when it rolls out later this summer to see if the function is headed to Android phones.

But as Consumer Reports’ Calla Deitrick points out, even if it does, it might take a while for the technology to get to all users.

“Given the helter-skelter, one-off approach phone companies take to their mobile operating systems, however, it will be a long time before a kill switch comes to all Android models,” Deitrick reports.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/12/ilm-creates-xlab-for-bring-virtual-reality-to-movie-experience/71064884/

Industrial Light & Magic wants to bring virtual reality to the movies (USA Today)

Marco della Cava, USA TODAY 12:29 a.m. EDT June 12, 2015

SAN FRANCISCO — Industrial Light & Magic is taking the notion of DVD-extras to a whole other galaxy.

The special-effects company, which was founded 40 years ago this summer by George Lucas to create the illusions for Star Wars, will announce Friday a new team dedicated to bringing virtual- and augmented-reality experiences to the movies.

ILM’s Experience Lab, or ILMxLab, will combine the technical assets of ILM, Skywalker Sound and Lucasfilm to create immersive experiences that allow fans to participate in their favorite movie worlds.

Although video games pegged to movies have promised a similar experience, this new tech will be different: non-competitive and using photo-realism rather than animation.

The division’s debut products will be Star Wars-based and debut later this year. The company is also working with other filmmakers to bring their projects into the virtual space. Disney, which bought Lucasfilm in 2013 for $3 billion, may use the resulting assets for everything from marketing to theme park attractions.

“ILMxLab is all about us leveraging our skills across all platforms,” says Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy. “It’s the Wild West out there with new frontiers, and we’re all figuring out these new tools. Today, technology is in search of content. But we can bring an emotional experience to that technology.”

ILMxLab’s next-gen entertainment mission comes at a time when the U.S. special effects scene – which pioneering ILM once dominated to the tune of 16 Oscars – faces increasing challenges from rival companies in Europe and Asia that benefit from tax incentives.

“The period of American technological superiority in the movie business is gone,” Lucas told USA TODAY in an interview. “You can get the same technology and people anywhere in the world now.”

Enter ILMxLab, which is testing a variety of iPad- and Oculus Rift-based technology that allows movie aficionados to enter specific scenes of a movie and navigate through them at will. ILMxLab executives say the tech is most likely to make its debut in association with J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens in December.

“What we’re aiming for is to open the two-dimensional world of the movies and allow fans to walk into those worlds with the same visual fidelity,” says John Gaeta, ILMxLab’s creative director. “All that George begat caused a reassessment of innovation from movies to video games. The next 40 years of ILM is about exploding that universe with tech once again. xLab is as attuned to Silicon Valley as it is to Hollywood.”

In an exclusive demo for USA TODAY, Gaeta fired up a Star Wars-inspired scene where R2D2 and C-3PO are hiding from Storm Troopers in a dusty village. Instead of just watching the scene on a screen, a visitor holding an iPad can turn 360-degrees and see all around the main characters’ world.

One room over, the same scene is played on a monitor while a visitor pops on a pair of Oculus Rift virtual-reality goggles. This time, the point of view is from on board an X-Wing fighter jet, which not only flies around the village but also responds to banking commands with head tilts.

The difference between a video game and ILMxLab’s world are immediately apparent. Rather than the goal being beating a rival, the end game is to put the viewer inside the movie in order to explore story lines perhaps not pursued by the director in the feature film itself.

Says Kennedy: “With image-quality rivaling film, you’ll be able to literally step into an alternate reality.”

The speed and realism of the ILMxLab demo wasn’t possible just a few years ago, but the combination of equipment such as tablets and VR goggles and the ability to store and stream massive data files in the cloud have changed the equation.

“Apple, Google, Intel, they all have moonshot projects around AR and VR, but they’re still just figuring it out,” Gaeta says. “Our standards for world-building are very high, and we intend to use our technology to give people experiences that they haven’t yet dreamed of.”

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

Chaos Manor View, Friday, June 12, 2015

I continue to have typing difficulties, but I hope to overcome them. Progress continues on all my collaborations, and we hope to have some new publications fairly soon. I have taken to carrying the walker down the hall, trying to build confidence in my walking without it.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-federal-marching-band-of-music-regulators-1434063221

The Federal Marching Band of Music Regulators

The industry has been beset by punitive fines, armed raids and threats of jail. Even banjo makers aren’t safe.

By

Brian T. Majeski

For more than a century, the music industry escaped the gaze of government agencies thanks to its small scale—$6.8 billion now in the U.S.—and its wholesome, noncontroversial products. Few things seem less deserving of federal regulation than a 5th grader with an oboe. On the rare occasions in history when prominent officials took notice, the magazine I edit, Music Trades, ran celebratory headlines: “President Taft At Baldwin Piano Plant Opening,” or “Clinton Says Playing Music Made Me President.”

Over the past seven years, however, the tenor of the government’s interest in the music business has changed. Our magazine now regularly carries accounts of punitive fines, armed raids and threats of jail time.

If you ever needed examples of the evils of federalizing everything, the above article will supply them. Armed raids on musical instrument makers. Years of lawsuits. Piano teachers subject to regulation from Washington for teaching piano to the neighbor kids. Years of lawsuits without indictments (much less convictions) but extorted “consent decrees” priming hordes of lawyers to file class action suits. Regulation run riot.

In March 2013 the FTC then turned its sights on the Music Teachers National Association, a 139-year old organization comprised primarily of women who give piano lessons in their homes. The group’s code of ethics, which discouraged members from poaching one another’s students, was deemed a restraint of trade. The association got off without a fine but had to abandon its code of ethics, train members about “anticompetitive practices,” draft a 20-year compliance plan, and file annual updates with the FTC.

And more; clearly the goal is to create hordes of officers to harass the people and eat out their substance.

Just for the record, at 1604 yesterday, essentially right on schedule, my Time Warner connection to the Internet went out

: Higher Education

http://www.breitbart.com/california/2015/06/10/lausd-lowers-standards-to-let-22000-failing-students-graduate-some-as-old-as-22/

    Don’t you hate when your predictions come true but not the ones you hoping to see?

Eric

I suppose it was inevitable. If you assume intellectual equality of students, you cannot allow any to fail; if you insist on intellectual standards, some students will not meet them.

Of course intellectual careers are only one life course, and while vital, others are just as necessary for a proper civilization. And if you want a democracy you must have taught good citizenship.

Starswarm

I hadn’t read Starswarm until now, but you mentioned it in your blog a while ago and it sounded interesting, so I bought it. I thought you’d like to know that I liked it enough that I’ll probably reread it someday, as I already have with Higher Education. I thought Tarleton was especially well named; I presume you were thinking of Tarleton of “Tarleton’s Quarter” in the Revolution.

—

Meredith Dixon <dixonm@pobox.com>

Starswarm  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=starswarm (also available as an Audible book) remains one of my favorite books, with new aliens and a working AI.  I’ll take your note as an excuse to mention it. Thanks

http://www.libertynewsnow.com/did-obama-let-isis-go-nuclear/article1574

Send enough to do the job Subject

Dr. Pournelle,
I agree with your sentiment. Upon hearing of the CINC’s decision to send more advisors and trainer to Iraq, I was reminded of the Heinlein quote (in the character of the hero Gordon) : “…a Military Adviser who has been dead four days in that heat smells the same way a corpse does in a real war. “
Both Presidents Bush were pressed to define an exit criteria and goals before engaging in Iraq and Afghanistan, but these remained poorly defined. Without achievable goals, one cannot have a strategy, which the current President freely admits he does not have. I hear “provide leadership”, “provide national security,” “stability,” and “coordination of effort,” but no goals, nor means of achieving any. I don’t feel that we’ll ever get a statement of strategy from this administration.
Without a strategy, Iraq will become the same quagmire that Afghanistan is and Vietnam was: in spite of military successes, there can be no political victory and no way to leave.
In addition to sending enough to do the job, we’d better define the job. If not, we’d do better to turn turtle and stay home.
-d

I am not familiar with the source, but the concept of a nuclear ISIS is frightening.  We cannot end the Caliphate without serious effort, now about two divisions and the Warthogs; but that would do it and save lives. We could retake Anbar Province, give the northern part to the Kurds, and give the Sunni part to Jordan. That would buy the Middle East some time; and it would buy us a way out of the Middle East. That seems an obvious strategy to me, but apparently not to the Powers.

1604  The usual Internet failure by Time Warner. Shouldn’t last too long.

High-Tech Solar Projects Fail to Deliver

$2.2 billion project in California generates just 40% of its expected electricity

By

Cassandra Sweet

June 12, 2015 3:48 p.m. ET

50 COMMENTS

Some costly high-tech solar power projects aren’t living up to promises their backers made about how much electricity they could generate.

Solar-thermal technology, which uses mirrors to capture the sun’s rays, was once heralded as the advance that would overtake old fashioned solar panel farms. But a series of missteps and technical difficulties threatens to make newfangled solar-thermal technology obsolete.

The $2.2 billion Ivanpah solar power project in California’s Mojave Desert is supposed to be generating more than a million megawatt-hours of electricity each year. But 15 months after starting up, the plant is producing just 40% of that, according to data from the U.S. Energy Department.

The sprawling facility uses “power towers”—huge pillars surrounded by more than 170,000 mirrors, each bigger than a king-size bed—to capture the sun’s rays and create steam. That steam is used to generate electricity. Built by BrightSource Energy Inc. and operated by NRG Energy Inc.,Ivanpah has been advertised as more reliable than a traditional solar panel farm, in part, because it more closely resembles conventional power plants that burn coal or natural gas. NRG co-owns the plant with Google Inc.and other investors.

Turns out, there is a lot more to go wrong with the new technology. Replacing broken equipment and learning better ways to operate the complex assortment of machinery has stalled Ivanpah’s ability to reach full potential, said Randy Hickok, a senior vice president at NRG. New solar-thermal technology isn’t as simple as traditional solar panel installations. Since older solar photovoltaic panels have been around for decades, they improve in efficiency and price every year, he said.

“There’s a lot more on-the-job learning with Ivanpah,” Mr. Hickok said, adding that engineers have had to fix leaky tubes connected to water boilers and contend with a vibrating steam turbine that threatened nearby equipment.

The real problem with ground based solar is storage.  The sun doesn’t shine at night… And there are more clouds than the models predicted.  Even though the drought is severe.  Climate is what you predict.  Weather is what you get.

“Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans”

The idea is to get an education for something PRODUCTIVE, but no, we have to get all “touchie feelie”.  How many more are there whose major was “Black History Studies”, or “Women Studies”?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/why-i-defaulted-on-my-student-loans.html

Remove all warning labels and let natural selection work.

It isn’t just adding courses that has happened to education.  If you go for equality in admissions, you lower the admissions standards. You must then adjust the course material lest too many flunk out; of course they should not have been there to begin with.  But the larger student bodies means much larger staff, faculty and others, so costs, driven by unions – labor wants more! – climb, and tuition rises skyward; you can’t work your way through college. Yet the swollen ranks of faculty and staff must be paid, and their pay raised, and their pensions paid; so education needs more money even as it produces less. It costs more for less, and this spiral continues.  You may predict the result

: A-10 Crisis Worsens

As I pointed out in a previous email, the F-35 cannot effectively aim its 25mm cannon and the Air Force says it will be seven years before the F-35 can do close air support missions. But, with the history of delays we might suspect it would take longer than seven years.

So, you and I would think the Air Force would just keep the A-10s around a little longer… But, you and I are sensible people, bureaucrats are not:

<.>

“We want to take those [A-10] aviators, and have designated, predominantly close air support squadrons in F-15s and F-16s,” Gen.

Herbert Carlisle, head of Air Combat Command, told reporters after the gathering. “We will always do close air support.”

</>

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-u-s-air-force-now-wants-to-replace-the-a-10-with-the-f-16-474fc2db2963

This is idea is neither good nor original; they tried it during the first Gulf Conflict and it was an abysmal failure. Worst of all, Air Force officers don’t seem to have a concrete plan to make it happen.

Carlisle says they lack resources, organization, and exercises and the solution will “evolve over time”. Sounds ad hoc to me…

We have another interesting problem. You would think that close air support would require some coordination among the forces involved.

For example, as an Air Force commander I might want to know what my Army guys on the ground need and I might want to hear their suggestions when I put my CAS program together. Well, our Air Force doesn’t agree:

<.>

Participants went in understanding that there is no future for the Warthog, according to Sprey. “One other huge lie was that this was a joint enterprise,” the A-10 designer added.

Air Force officials effectively briefed members of the other services and U.S. Special Operations Command on a decision they had already made, rather than truly soliciting their advice, Sprey explained.

</>

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-u-s-air-force-now-wants-to-replace-the-a-10-with-the-f-16-474fc2db2963

And if you get deeper into this article and consider the armament differences between the F-25 and the A-10, especially when we look at the 180 rounds for the F-35’s 25mm cannon vs. the 1,200 rounds for the A-10’s 30mm cannon, you may wonder why the Air Force would want to replace the A-10 with a clearly inferior plane.

But then we have this:

<.>

“Platforms like the A-10 amplify the deficiencies in the F-35 program, and the Air Force doesn’t want the A-10 there to serve as a direct competitor,” said Mandy Smithberger, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information—part of the Project On Government Oversight.

“Keeping the A-10 around makes the [F-35’s] CAS shortfalls particularly pronounced, and creates an opportunity for fly offs.”

</>

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-u-s-air-force-now-wants-to-replace-the-a-10-with-the-f-16-474fc2db2963

Why does the Air Force want this system so badly that it will retire a system that is clearly more effective just to have the damned thing?

Is this a bailout program for Lockheed? And, the Air Force wants

this program so badly that it not only wants to scrap an effective, combat proven system but it will not solicit advice from the forces it’s supposed to support? This doesn’t make sense to me.

I’m starting to agree with you; I think it’s time to put the Air Force back under Army command; the Air Force clearly lost perspective and I’m starting to think Air Force decisions — as outlined in this

article — weaken the national security. An independent Air Force

was an interesting experiment, but it seems to have run its course. I don’t want us to have a huge failure before we decide that it’s time to make some sensible reforms. I’d still like to read more from you about how going from the Defense Department back to the War Department would help our position.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

It may take a disaster.  And an Independent Air Force plays hell with the Principle of the Unity of Command

“If you want to restore liberal education, restore sexual morality. And if you want to restore sexual morality, restore liberal education. The same virtues of honor, self-control, innocence, purity, respect, patience, courage, and honesty are cultivated in both places.”
Peter Kreeft

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

Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, June 10, 2015

The hearing aid problem was mechanical and they can replace ear pieces and such on the spot so my hearing is at least as good as it was any any time after the stroke and possibly as good as back last year.

Saturday I get a new reprogramming of the electronics. We’ll see it it gets any better.

New iPhone 6 BIG works fine.

New Kindle Fire Big works fine. New Kindle smaller also seem to work fine. I am well Kindled.

Roberta had a dental emergency and much of yesterday and today are devoured by locusts as I try to deal with it and Larry’s car won’t start so he will be late to Wed conference with Jack Cohen and then I have to talk them into taking me to the grocery store to get gluten free soup – Wolfgang Puck makes good gf chicken soup. Needless to say Roberta will not be joining us for lunch.

And it is hot and gloomy and muggy in Los Angeles.

President Obama has announced that he will send more troops to Iraq. It does not sound as if he will send many. This is a drastic mistake. Never do your enemy a small injury. The American way of war is Victory.

I could eradicate the Caliphate with two divisions plus the Warthogs; I do not think he is sending enough to win; I fear he will be feeding a squad a day meatgrinder if we are unfortunate, and prolonging a stalemate at best.

More later: Steve is here and we are making contact with Dr. Cohen in England.

We had a good lunch and afterward Niven and I tried to some grocery shopping but I couldn’t remember the brand of cranberry juice despite having seen it at the breakfast table for weeks.  Alas I can’t go correct that, and I didn’t want to ask Larry to go again because it’s hot and the Studio City parking lot was so full we had a good hike getting into the store.  Of course coming out we walked past dozens of close by empty parking spaces. I guess it’s always that way.

Larry Niven and Steve Barnes at lunch.  They’re both Grandmasters. Larry at Science Fiction and Steve at various martial arts.

We had a good lunch and marveled at our iPhones – Steve got a hew iPhone 6 recently and of course I just got mine.  They are now fully as capable as Larry and I imagined ‘pocket computers” to be in Mote in God’s Eye in 1972. So far Mote still holds up in technology, but I can see a time coming when 21st Century technology puts to shame everything we had imagined for a far future.  As Steve put it, we have reached the future, at least as we saw it in 1972.

Only we haven’t of course. For the money NASA spent since Apollo we ought to be halfway to Alpha Centauri by now.  Perhaps not so far, but we’d certainly have more space infrastructure. It’s coming and the technology makes it cheaper.  The technical infrastructure makes it easier; but the bureaucracy is keeping up with its control, too. Bureaucracies are progressive. meaning they have a burning fear that someone. somewhere, is doing something without permission.

Now back to work.

I heard he is sending ‘advisors’.  This is good if the Iraqi’s have the will to do what is essential.  BIG IF.

Your idea about keeping the oil running is a smart one, I doubt we will do that.

B-

Advisors will not make Sunni confidant that Iraq national Army will not kill them, nor will they be able to prevent the Iraqi Army from either running away or being merciless if they win a battle.

Never Talk to the FBI – Denny Hastert Edition

Why every American should be alarmed by the Hastert case

To the average citizen, the news that former House Speaker Dennis Hastert has been indicted by federal prosecutors for failing to file required reports for cash transactions in his own bank account and then allegedly making false statements to the FBI, may seem like just another case of a political corruption and scandal.

That is not the case.

On Tuesday, Hastert pleaded not guilty. The large amounts of cash that he withdrew were allegedly used to pay someone who may have alleged he was abused by Hastert when the Republican politician was a high school wrestling coach.

But that is not what Hastert has been indicted for, and on closer examination, there are serious questions to be raised about the legal basis for the charges as well as the proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion by federal officials. As a preliminary matter it must be pointed out that none of these charges has anything to do with Hastert’s congressional service and the alleged abuse would have occurred many years before Hastert entered political life.

MSNBC LIVE WITH THOMAS ROBERTS, 6/9/15, 1:36 PM ET

A closer look at the legal charges against Dennis Hastert

It is also not clear whether Hastert’s payments to the accuser represent an illicit demand – extortion – or were made as part of some private settlement of such claims.

What is clear is that the former speaker did not want the reports filed that banking laws require when withdrawing amounts in excess of $10,000. When he realized such reports needed to be filed, he made the withdrawals in amounts under the $10,000 threshold, constituting illegal structuring of financial transactions.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/why-every-american-should-be-alarmed-the-hastert-case

I never met Hastert and I know nothing about him; but I do not trust the impartiality here.

After Reading David C.G. Hecht

I looked up that “first step into a thousand years of darkness” and found Reagan’s speech from 1964. Listening to him speak for the first

15 minutes, I am shocked at how the issues are the same today as in 1964. Nothing has been done and we still have the same idiotic bureaucrats making things worse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY#t=88

Another thing that strikes me; I forgot there was a time when politicians were respectable people who used facts and made sense when they talked. Now, I think the closest thing to a politician is a dim-witted customer service representative who reads from a script on the phone and can’t ever seem to get your phone number right even after you repeat it six times.

I wonder how many members of the general public would even understand what Reagan is saying.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Reagan wrote most of his own speeches, and was very widely read. It’s a pity so many of his speeches have vanished.

Washington Scrutinizes the Sharing Economy    (nyt)

By Rebecca R. Ruiz

June 9, 2015 6:06 pm June 9, 2015 6:06 pm

WASHINGTON — Washington is thinking hard about the sharing economy these days.

On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission held a daylong workshop dedicated to examining Internet peer-to-peer platforms like Uber, Airbnb and Postmates, and their offerings of on-demand rides, beds and slices of cake. Regulators, academics and industry representatives got together to consider the government’s place in overseeing those businesses.

The conversations were not uncontroversial. Sitting next to the head of global public policy for Airbnb, Vanessa Sinders of the American Hotel and Lodging Association warned against “rogue commercial interests” like Airbnb that were going unregulated. In some places, she said, “they are simply illegal hotels.”

Others said it was too soon for the government to intervene in a bigger way. Liran Einav, an economics professor at Stanford University, said he did not think regulations should be extended to the sharing economy just yet. “We should let it play out for a few years to get an idea of how it will operate, and then customize a level playing field,” he said.

Not everyone saw things that way. “It’s wrong that uncertainty should lead to forbearance,” said Glen Weyl, a senior researcher with Microsoft Research. “I’m not sure we have the luxury of saying, ‘We don’t know what’s going on here, let’s wait and see.’ ”

Somewhere, someone is out there doing thing without permission.  And may, they’re not the right things. We must do something.

Microsoft Picks Unusual Place to Make Its Giant Touch Screen: The U.S.    (nyt)

By NICK WINGFIELDJUNE 10, 2015

REDMOND, Wash. — There is nothing ordinary about Surface Hub, a gargantuan touch-screen computer that Microsoft is about to start selling to companies as a high-tech replacement for conference room whiteboards.

The largest Surface Hub, measuring 84 inches diagonally, looks like an iPad that has gone through a growth spurt. The 4K resolution of the screen produces dazzling images. At $20,000 apiece, a price Microsoft plans to announce on Wednesday, it should.

Just as unusual is where Microsoft is building the Surface Hub: Wilsonville, Ore., just outside Portland and about 200 miles south of the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. That puts the Surface Hub in a rare category, since the majority of Microsoft’s better-known devices, like the Xbox game console, are made overseas.

In recent years, there has been a surge of optimism about the prospect of high-tech manufacturing jobs returning to the United States after some headline-grabbing moves, such as Apple’s decision to build its Mac Pro computer in Texas starting in 2013. But they remain outliers in an industry that has outsourced to Asia the making of everything from game consoles to smartphones.

Dear Dr. Pournelle,
My apologies, but the last article I sent you was out of date; it is from 2014. No matter , the article for the current is almost word-for-word the same.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/world/middleeast/us-embracing-a-new-approach-on-battling-isis-in-iraq.html
Compared to the last article I sent you from a year ago

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-announces-he-is-sending-up-to-300-troops-back-to-iraq-as-advisers/2014/06/19/a15f9628-f7c2-11e3-8aa9-dad2ec039789_story.html

It appears that only the dates have changed. We lost a city in 2014. We responded with more advisors and more training. We last Ramadi. So this year we respond with — another 400 soldiers and more training. 

This is NOT a recipe for success.  

Still, I would prefer finding some way to actually use the people in theater rather than intervene ourselves if at all possible. It’s not American citizens being set fire to, after all , but they’re own people. And if they can’t find it in themselves to fight for their own people, why should we?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

The only way to use locals in this situation requires reconquest of the area.  The Sunni inhabitants don’t want to be turned over the the Shiite “Iraqi” army.  Iraq needs to be dismembered into viable states.  That can be done; and then they can be governed by locals, with the consent of the governed. But the only answer to the Caliphate requires force. Of course the Sunni Caliphate has its own view as to who shall govern…

The locals in Central “Iraq” are not going to be conquered by the the Iraqi Army, and “advisors” cannot create a Sunni army inside the Caliphate until it is dismembered.

What I want is not to be involved in the territorial disputes, but it’s a bit late just now: we called the Caliphate into existence when we deposed Saddam. 

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