Category Archives: View

Chaos Manor View, Thursday, June 04, 2015

I have received numerous emails describing how to use a Mac mushpad with pulldown menus, for which many thanks; I expect I knew the technique at one time and forgot it, but it also takes dexterity I no longer have. Knowing how to do something and doing it have diverged in the past year,

Not to complain. When I was young I thought of people my age as far older than I think of myself now, and I am often reminded of the proverb about lamenting that I had no shoes until I met a man who had not feet…

As to Skype, if you assume that with a Mac everything you need to do is either simple or impossible, then something seems difficult it is probably the fault of the app; apply logic. In a widely used app like Skype, there must be a simple trick to get past the problem. It probably assumes the user is non compos mentis. Solve the puzzle. If you add that my eyesight isn’t what it was, and I often do not notice things I should notice, the solution generally suggests itself. So it was in this case, and we had a very productive Skype conference with Dr. Jack Cohen in England. Jack worked with Anne McCaffrey and Terry Pratchett among others; he’s a PhD in biology with a strong interest in ecology, and when he’s worked with authors the result is generally spectacular. I said this yesterday, but after many of you had read it, so I’ll say it again:

“We had a very productive conference, arriving at a number of new plotlines on our new “Beowulf Series” novel about the first interstellar colonies. (Legacy of Heorot http://www.amazon.com/The-Legacy-Heorot-Book/dp/1470835541 , Beowulf’s Children http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765320886/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_3?pf_rd_p=1944687442&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1470835541&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0JAPV8WFM2QJRSH73F1R) and the novella that fits between them, The Secret of Blackship Island http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Island-novella-Avalon-Series-ebook/dp/B007MSK4HM . The events taking place in the Blackship Island novella turn out to be extremely important and have a greater effect on the plot than the characters know. Jack Cohen had many suggestions to make the biology richer. I think this will be a big best-seller when we finish next week.”

I’m very pleased that the work we did on the Blackship Island novella will lead to some great scenes in the new book.

Rand Paul has said that American Adventurism in the Far East created ISIS. Of course I think he’s right, since I predicted it would happen. After all, we created al quada with our earlier intervention, and the hostility we get from Russia and all the people of the lower Danube come from our feckless meddling in the Balkans, where we chose to support the Bosnians by bombing the Slavs. The result was to confirm Slavic and Russian suspicions that the West was trying to encircle Russia. Containment was of course explicitly encirclement but we had no choice as the USSR was expansionist, But when the Cold War ended there was a chance of a reset.

Albright/Clinton ended that.

Then we intervened in Iraq and hanged Saddam; now we miss him. We were there because al Qaeda attacked the US. Al Qaeda did that because the USA had soldiers in Arabia as a result of the first Gulf War; that made the US an enemy. Iraq had nothing to do with 911 but we acted as if Iraq had been in on it.

We defeated Iraq and al Qaeda; that left a lot of Muslim young men eager to get the US out of the Middle East. ISIS resulted, and its message is, get the West out of Muslim homelands.

The fact that in a real sense we created al Quada and ISIS does not mean we can ignore them. ISIS has declared war to the knife against US. We have some friends—well as much friends as we can have—in area: they don’t want us there, but they want the Caliphate even less. We created the monster. It is up to us to destroy it. We should do so, giving Sunni Iraq to the Kurds, and get the hell out. We may have to do something similar in Libya. We wish to the very bones of our being that we had saved Kaddafi, and most wish Saddam were back in Iraq. So much for our becoming involved in the territorial disputes of Europe and the Middle East.

It’s getting late and I am going to LASFS tonight.

From Jerry Pournelle:

White collar automation will bring new industrial revolution, says CEO (ZD)

For years I said that robots would relieve us of mind struggle repetitive work.  I never wondered what the effect on people who could only do that kind of work would be.

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

= = = =

White collar automation will bring new industrial revolution, says CEO (ZD)

Robotic Process Automation automates complex tasks usually performed by white collar workers. Mihir Shukla is CEO of Automation Anywhere, one of the largest RPA players in the world, and he says it will make us more human and could bring about the next industrial revolution.

= = = =

FDR sort of had the right idea during the Depression – putting people to work digging ditches and building things. About now is the time when we hire everyone to work – 4 days a week. Give them the fifth day off to look for work in in the private sector. People are looking to get on Disability to get an assured income. OK. Let’s assure all citizens and legal residents four benefits – shelter, food, medical care and a small cash allowance. In return for those they work four days a week. They dig ditches, work in day care centers, sit with people who must lie in bed, supervise sheltered workshops for cognitively disabled, etc. — even the “Disabled” can do something. Able-bodied people can dig up curbs and place ramps for bicycles and baby buggies. All low-tech stuff. Only buy shovels and small steamrollers from American companies. Let’s do all the stuff we can’t afford to do while we’re paying people to sit on the duffs.

We have stuff that needs to get done. We have people collecting benefits who need something to do. Let’s call it Workfare. It was done during the 1990’s with some success. Let’s expand the program. Everybody becomes an employee, so their health insurance gets paid for. And all work – no Disabled except the unconscious and the demented. When your Unemployment benefits run out after 6-8 weeks, back to work you go. Otherwise, we all work until we are old enough to retire.

Ed

I agree. You want the dole, earn it. If you can’t use a shovel, answer the phone. If that’s medically impossible, sit on street corners as company for crossing guards, or pour water for shovel workers. You will work for the largesse of your neighbors. And there is work to be done.

Alas that will result in a unionized army of managers on civil service as well as the hate mail I will now get.

From Holly Lisle

I’m not sure how much I agree with this, but I found it a good read.

>

>

> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/06/03/he-was-certain-technology-would-save-the-world-heres-what-changed-his-mind/

> He was certain technology would save the world. Here’s what changed his mind. (WP)

>

> By Matt McFarland June 3 at 9:07 AM

>

> For a long time Kentaro Toyama was a believer in technological utopianism. He studied physics at Harvard and earned a PhD in computer science at Yale. Toyama went on to do research at Microsoft. The work was demanding, but something was missing.

> “At the end of the day, I was helping to make better gadgets for wealthy people who could afford to play video games,” Toyama told me.

> In 2004, when his boss asked if he was interested in opening a research center in India, Toyama accepted on the spot. He’d never even been to India. But he was hungry to make more of a direct contribution to society.

> Here was the chance to sprinkle tech fairy dust on a developing nation and watch success after success.

> Except it didn’t play out like that.

> Toyama spent five years in India with a team of about 10 and hatched about 50 projects. He found the projects that had a real social impact were ones in which he worked with capable organizations that were committed to their mission.

In the year and a half I spent in Central America—1974-1976—(Costa Rica, Guatemala), I saw huge swaths of the population who lived in huts made of stick and leaves whose children ran naked through the streets because they had no clothes. And I saw the folks who had houses that put the abodes of America’s super-rich to shame. In one of these houses lived a friend of mine whose high-caste Castilian parents bought her a pedigreed champion Andalusian stallion for her 15th birthday. (Even then, this would have been like buying her the world’s most expensive car.)

Everyone was on the take, the countries were at war with themselves (Guatemala literally, Costa Rica with a major Communist influx from Cuba going on).

Business was done by pull, influence and bribes, not by quality, effort, and integrity. The Guatemalan government operated by force against its own people. Those with money were those with power.

The fallout of this was horrific—and this is the way most of the world works.

My older son saw this in Afghanistan while he was stationed there trying to train the local forces to protect themselves from the religious terrorists when US forces moved out.

Nothing can save people who live under corrupt governments except to get them out—and even then, if they bring their culture with them, and that culture includes the core belief pull, influence, and bribes are the way business must be done, and that the use of force against innocents and citizens is appropriate, they just bring hell with them.

If this sounds like I’m describing the way things have increasingly turning here for the last couple of decades, that’s not by accident.

So Toyama is right in that technology won’t fix anything. He’s wrong in thinking that anything short of a change of philosophy will.

From whole governments down to single individuals, if people expect to get something for nothing, demand fairness rather than justice, and think that governments rather than their own work and creativity create money, they cannot be saved.

Holly

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

Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, June 03, 2015

Niven and Barnes are going to be here shortly and I am going to attempt to SKYPE Dr. Jack Cohen in England, but something horrible has happened to Skype. On my MacBook Pro It has moved my entire mail contact list into “contacts” and I can’t find anything. I can’t test anything because I can’t find the test call. I have thousands of “Skype Contacts” instead of the dozen or so I have used.

Is there any way of having a small select list of Skype contacts instead of the thousands in my MacBook “Contacts” folder? You cannot delete one from Skype without deleting it from contacts. This all happened when I installed what I thought were routine updates including the Cloud; it imported all the mail contacts into Skype contacts.

I am beginning to hate the Putridos Operating Apple System has installed.

1100: Niven and Barnes are here, but Skype seems not to be working properly; I can Skype Roberta and she can Skype me, but I get no error messages when I try to Skype Jack and that fails; it just stops trying. I suspect he is not on line, but the Skype system has been improved to incomprehensibility.

I have asked Steve and Larry to bring down from upstairs my regular chair, so the wheel chair is now in the back room permanently and maybe we’ll just send it back. So far it works well, my arms are at the right height and it may be that I will learn to type faster and better. We’ll see. It seems better anyway, but I am hitting the wrong keys and making too many errors unless I look at the keyboard and not the screen..

1135: Jack Cohen called us, namely called Steve Barnes on his MacBook Air (which connected just fine to me Wi-Fi network).

We had a very productive conference, arriving at a number of new plotlines on our new “Beowulf Series” novel about the first interstellar colonies. (Legacy of Heorot http://www.amazon.com/The-Legacy-Heorot-Book/dp/1470835541 , Beowulf’s Children http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765320886/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_3?pf_rd_p=1944687442&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1470835541&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0JAPV8WFM2QJRSH73F1R) and the novella that fits between them, The Secret of Blackship Island http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Island-novella-Avalon-Series-ebook/dp/B007MSK4HM . The events taking place in the Blackship Island novella turn out to be extremely important and have a greater effect on the plot than the characters know. Jack Cohen had many suggestions to make the biology richer. I think this will be a big best-seller when we finish next week.

Then we went out to lunch. Just got back. I’ll try to post more, but I must confess I’ve done a good day’s work. It was a very productive conference and lunch.

1700:

Whenever you work with a Mac you need to keep in mind the principle – first formulated by Peter Glaskowsky and published here about a decade ago – that with a Mac everything is either very simple or impossible. The corollary is that if it really has to be doable, there is a very simple way – but if you don’t use Macs so much, you may not find it simple until you cotton to the Mac Way Of Doing Things. Applying that principle solved most of my problems.  Of course I didn’t have them until they Improved things.  But all is more or less well now.

Of course it takes two hands to access an item on a command list pulled down by a right click if you are using a mushpad…

Oh crud. Oh crud oh crud oh crud.

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2015/06/01/strong-earthquake-strikes-off-oregon-coast/28295673/

Guys, look up Cascadia Subduction Zone. Then look up megathrust earthquake. Then look up Boxing Day Tsunami. This quake cluster is on the BACK side of the Juan de Fuca plate. The FRONT side of the Juan de Fuca is the subduction zone.
Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

Right now we’re looking at a localized swarm of 4.0-6.0 magnitude earthquakes. Notional energy release 0.01 – 15 Kilotons, though there have now been three in the 5-15 kiloton range.

If this pattern continues, there is a good chance of a larger quake (probably on the order of 3x but possibly up to 10x or more in  the cumulative energy release of the smaller localized quakes) elsewhere on the fault zone circling the plate. However, it won’t necessarily follow immediately, but the more small quakes continue the more likely this is a precursor (within 1-3 days) of a larger quake.

If it continues for another day or two, a 7-7.3 quake with epicenter on the coastal leg of the plate between Medford and Portland (probably nearer one of those two ends because of the geometry, I would wager) has some potential before the end of the week.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_scale

However, the USGS states that this is not an unusual occurrence and doesn’t usually result in a larger quake.  That said, these quakes are larger than in most earthquake swarms I’ve looked at over the years.

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2015/06/no_tsunami_risk_after_four_ear.html

I think the bottom line is, watch what happens. A larger quake is certainly not inevitable, and would not necessarily be devastating, but if the swarm continues I believe, with Stephanie, that it becomes more likely.

J

The thing to consider here is that the western edge of the Juan de Fuca “plate” (this area is actually fragments of as many as 3 ancient plates, that have all almost completely subducted) has two different kinds of boundaries. If you look at the western boundary, you’ll see it has a kind of zigzag shape to it. The ones that trend westerly on the north end (the “zigs,” if you will) are what are termed “fracture zones,” and the ones that trend easterly on the north end (the “zags”) are actually spreading zones, with volcanic ridges.

The current quake swarm is occurring in a fracture zone, specifically the Blanco Fracture Zone.

Where this gets more complex, and more troublesome, is that there has been evidence of eruptions along the volcanic ridge to the north, in the Juan de Fuca Ridge, notably the Axial Volcano/Seamount.

If so, this means that there is likely significant pressure building up along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, as the sea floor spreads and shifts.
If you go here: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/ and click the cog, then select “30 days, mag 2.5+ Worldwide,” you will see that in the last month, there have been NO significant quakes (defined as >2.5) on the Cascadia, but some 15 along the various faults of the western Juan de Fuca, including the ones of the article — and several additional this afternoon and evening.

The general view is that Portland and Seattle are largely safe from tsunami, though not from the quake. After the Banda Aceh quake and tsunami, however, I am not entirely sure that is actually 100% true. Yes, Portland is inland, up the Columbia River. And Seattle is protected by the Sound and the islands. But in the Banda Aceh tsunami we saw plainly the ability of the wave to wrap around coastlines, to strike the back sides of islands, to reflect, refract, diffract, and experience both constructive and destructive interference. And if you’ve ever driven the PacNW coast like I have, you’ll know about the signs along the coastal highway every little bit: Entering Tsunami Hazard Zone, Exiting Tsunami Hazard Zone.

I agree with Jim: this is a wait and see period. But a big one on the Cascadia is only a matter of time; there’s plenty of geologic evidence of multiple large tsunamis in the past. All you have to do is go to a coastal region and dig a trench and look at the strata.  And that will continue to be the case, at least until the entire Juan de Fuca (and other fragments) have entirely subducted, which isn’t going to occur for some time yet, geologically speaking. Whereas, geologically speaking, a Cascadia quake may be imminent.

So I don’t plan to go visiting the PacNW anytime soon. And I’m not going to tell my family to do so, either.
Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

Google hit with EC antitrust complaint after booting privacy app from Play store (ZD)

An app maker set up by former Googlers has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission after being banned from Google Play.

By Liam Tung | June 3, 2015 — 09:25 GMT (02:25 PDT) |

The maker of a privacy app has lodged a complaint with the European Commission, alleging Google abused its dominance of Europe’s mobile market by blocking its app from the Google Play app store.

The complaint was filed by Disconnect, a US app maker founded by ex-Google employees, after its Disconnect Mobile app was pulled from the Google Play app store last year.

Google advised the company last August that the app violated its developer distribution agreement for Google Play, which prohibits apps from interfering with other apps.

Disconnect CEO Casey Oppenheim claimed that Google removed the app because it threatened the search company’s tracking and advertising business and “mistook us for an adblocker” – a category of apps that Google has previously removed from its app store.

Net neutrality

girls on submarine duty

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150602/us–submarine-video_investigation-33b388bc52.html

Who would have thought this would happen?

—

Phil Tharp

I presume getting pregnant at sea is a court martial offense?

Watt’s Up With That – CAGW isnot settled 

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/02/why-cagw-theory-is-not-settled-science/
Where does that leave one in the Great Climate Debate? Well, it damn well should leave you skeptical as all hell.
…
The sad thing about the Great Climate Debate is that so far, there hasn’t really been a debate. The result is presented, but no one ever takes questions from the podium and is capable of defending their answers against a knowledgeable and skeptical questioner.
…
In the end, nobody really knows the global average temperature of the Earth’s surface in 2011 within less than around 1K. If anybody claims to, they are full of shit.
Physics Prof at Duke agrees with you Jerry!
Pete

More convincing is that Freeman Dyson does also.

The Pipes Gladstone link in your latest posting results in your personal email being added to his mailing list.

Harmon Dow

I have since removed the Piped message. I knew Daniel Pipes as a Cold Warier, and had dinner with him in Moscow back in 1889,

“I Give Up: There Is No Terrorism, There Are No Terrorists” – Pipes in NRO, #1409 D. Pipes Mailing List <daniel.pipes@gmail.com>  if you want to see it. I thought today’s theme worth noting.

The link I mean is “click here” below:

Gatestone daily publishes original articles by authoritative authors on such underreported news events as the persecution of Christians, Muslim resistance to Islamism, the multicultural disaster, and the shifting power balance between the United States and its enemies. The Middle East and Islam are its central but not exclusive concerns.

I find the articles interesting and useful. If you wish to receive them, click here.

Sincerely,

Daniel Pipes

Harmon Dow

http://www.zdnet.com/article/yes-apple-tv-will-be-a-homekit-hub/

Yes, Apple TV will be a HomeKit hub (ZD)

It’s official: the Apple TV can be the bridge to your connected home for remote access and information. Best of all, you won’t need to buy new hardware.

By Kevin Tofel for Mobile Platforms | June 3, 2015 — 13:03 GMT (06:03 PDT) |

While many, including me, are expecting new Apple TV hardware to debut at next week’s WorldWide Developer Conference, it won’t just be for entertainment. Apple TV is part of Apple’s HomeKit platform for your connected home.

That’s based on the official support document for Set up and use HomeKit-enabled accessories with your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, which was just updated on Tuesday. 9to5 Mac spotted the changes which now include this relevant information:

If you have an Apple TV (3rd generation or later) with software version 7.0 or later, you can control your HomeKit-enabled accessories when you’re away from home using your iOS device.

Sign in with the same Apple ID on your iOS device and Apple TV, and you’ll be able to use Siri commands to remotely control your accessories.

Perhaps the best part of the statement is that even if there’s a new Apple TV model debuting next week, those with older hardware won’t need to purchase it for HomeKit support. The 3rd generation Apple TV launched in March, 2012 and will work with HomeKit devices.

Why have a hub such as Apple TV in the smarthome?

As Apple notes, this would allow for remote access to your HomeKit-compatibile switches, appliances, lights and thermostats; the first of which just launched on Tuesday.

Having a hub could also make it easier for HomeKit devices to work together. When a door sensor triggers, indicating that you’ve come home at night for example, the hub could see this information and turn on your lights.

Based on my own smarthome experiences — I installed an Insteon system back in 2010 — this is the type of scenario where a connected home really adds value; the home intelligently starts to take action based on events.

Apple’s support document doesn’t state that this is how the Apple TV will fit in to a HomeKit environment and it may not even do so at next week’s developer event. I think there’s a good chance it will, however; if not next week, then in the future as more capabilities are added to HomeKit.

OSX

Dear Jerry,

As much as I like my Macs and OSX, address book management and the email app are abysmal at best. Google for contacts, email and search. Also, I always use a Microsoft mouse with my Macs and usually a Microsoft keyboard.

Anyway, hang in there. We need your sage thoughts.

Best regards,

Bob

I like Macs for much but they do tend to do things for you that might better be left undone; as Peter Glaskowsky reminds me, often the Mac is not to blame.

He says “You are probably familiar with the basic concept that blaming the wrong party for any problem will pretty much prevent you from solving the problem.” Which is certainly true.

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

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, June 02, 2015

I have an appointment with the podiatrist in a few minutes, and tomorrow Niven and Barnes and I will Skype with Dr. Jack Cohen about or new interstellar colony novel. (Sequel to the best-selling Legacy of Heorot http://www.amazon.com/The-Legacy-Heorot-Book/dp/1470835541.) Which means this will have to be short

Back from me Kaiser visit, looking forward to Skype with Dr. Jack tomorrow.  My Kindle was dead at Kaiser, and when I came home and charged it, it was still dead. Fussed for about an hour with no success, went on line and Amazon basically told me to do what I had already done, to wit hold the power button down a long time and then try to start. Nope. Dead. Got on line with Raj at Amazon HELP (find contact us and choose chat – at least I did since I don’t hear well on the phone. Raj told me to hold the power button down for a long time. I’d already done that but I did it again.  Told him it was still dead.  He sent for help and I got Rahib, who told me to hold the power button down for a long time.  Did that and told him.

He decided the Kindle was dead, and outside the one year warranty – but he could offer me a discount on a new one.  One of the offers was foe a larger newer model at some discount. Also had larger memory. It will come Friday with a box prepaid to ship the old one back.

So my old Kindle Fire lasted about 2 years. Worked just fine, died suddenly – was working perfectly and then just wouldn’t turn on.  The button seemed sluggish so after I did all the other attempts I sprayed in zero-residue contact cleaner. Seemed the button was looser but that may have been me, but it still wouldn’t turn on. And I was horrified at the thought of not having a Kindle. Well, it won’t be more than a couple of days.

Went by the UPS Store box and was horrified to learn that I hadn’t paid the bill or visited the place in a while. I’ve paid and I am recording some subscriptions that lay there far too long: apologies. While there I practiced putting the walker in the car, and when we got home I got it out again and came in by myself.  Triumph.  Next thing is to drive my own car.

Tomorrow I Skype and conference.  I have much mail asking for advice on what the heck is going on in the country and I’m trying to work on that, but the situation is complex.  The trigger happy crowd uses proof by repeated assassination as their debate tactic; say anything disturbing to them and they scream and leap.  Rational debate becomes impossible, which is why I no longer appear in many places I used to visit; just to many scream and leap young people who learned it from their teachers.  It’s depressing.

And the crime rate goes up as “Broken window” policing is abandoned by cops who just want to retire;  places that respect police get policed, while Baltimore murder rates, generally of blacks killed by blacks, soars. It was all predicted, but it’s depressing all the same.

Isis and Iraq 

Dear Dr. Pournelle, 
There are a couple of articles on the subject I believe you will find of interest. 
The first is an article on the role of western intelligence — especially, Turkey — in fostering ISIS
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092
The second is a discussion of the failures of the Iraqi army
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/31/key-rebels-ready-to-quit-u-s-fight-vs-isis.html
So, from these things I draw a few conclusions:
1) No one in Iraq is willing to fight for the central government; that is how 150 fighters can route 5000 men armed and supplied by the US. The Peshmerga will fight for Kurdistan, the Shiites will fight for their neighborhoods, the Sunnis will fight for themselves. They’re all fighting each other, but no one’s interested in the central government. 
2) Our own ability to pick and choose winners in these struggles is extremely limited; many of the “moderates” we pick turn out to be extremists, and the real moderates are badly handicapped by US policies.  
Unfortunately, we can’t simply leave this mess alone; leaving them alone won’t stop them from, say, hijacking airplanes and flying in the buildings. That’s the problem with peace — the other side has to be willing to let you surrender and leave the field. That can’t happen. Like it or not, Saudi Arabia et al are part of the world economy, all that oil makes that part of the world important, and Israel is still there just waiting to eat a hydrogen bomb from the first non-Jewish people able to develop one and crazy enough to use it. 
So we can’t simply walk away from this.  
Nor do we, as a country, have the will to send in the troops and occupy Iraq and Syria long-term.  It’s what the Romans would have done, but we won’t.
So what’s left? The only thing I can think of is hope from some Bonapartish military dictator who wants to rule the whole mess , and allow him to conquer the territory, imposing his rule on the restive minorities by brute force.  Saddam II, in other words.  And then HE will be a security threat as well. 
Another alternative: Instead of trying to construct a healthy Iraq, deliberately destabilize the situation further, so that the entire region tears itself apart. If they’re busy killing each other they won’t have time to plot terrorist actions against Israel or the US.   The downside of that is , eventually, all civil wars end, often with the most extreme and virulent group triumphant.  
I’m leaning towards a Saddam II, if we can find one.  Seems a pity we killed the last one.
Creating a western democracy in Iraq, a la West Germany or Japan, would have been ideal. However, for roughly the same time we occupied Japan and Germany, we failed utterly to recreate those conditions. Why?  Do we have the will to try again?
Somehow I doubt it.
So in the absence of full-scale invasion and occupation, we are reduced to a hunt for proxies who won’t do what we want but will be marginally less bad than the alternatives.
What do you think?
Respectfully,

Brian P.

I tried to warn them before Bush I invaded. And we have neither the will nor the means to govern Iraq; never did. We could have created a puppet regime, but we could not use the US Army to govern it; governing by Marines might have worked, but we didn’t try it. Nor did we learn, to Kaddafi’s sorrow.

As to what to do now, give as much ISIS territory as possible to the Kurds so we have at least one friend there – and stop involvement in territorial affairs of Middle East,  Have to go

Jerry

“Thought vectors” as the Door Into Summer:

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/206521-thought-vectors-could-revolutionize-artificial-intelligence

Ed

‘Thought vectors’ could revolutionize artificial intelligence

• By Aaron Krumins on May 27, 2015 at 8:39 am

Despite all the recent hullabaloo concerning artificial intelligence, in part fueled by dire predictions made by the likes of Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, there have been few breakthroughs in the field to warrant such fanfare. The artificial neural networks that have caused so much controversy are a product of the 1950s and 60s, and remain relatively unchanged since then. The strides forward made in areas like speech recognition owe as much to improved datasets (think big data) and faster hardware than to actual changes in AI methodology. The thornier problems, like teaching computers to do natural language processing and leaps of logic remain nearly as  intractable now as they were a decade ago.

This may all be about to change. Last week, the British high priest of artificial intelligence Professor Geoffrey Hinton, who was snapped up by Google two years back during its massive acquisition of AI experts, revealed that his employer may have found a means of breaking the AI deadlock that has persisted in areas like natural language processing.

The hope comes in the form of a concept called “thought vectors.”  If you have never heard of a thought vector, you’re in good company.  The concept is both new and controversial. The underlying idea is that by ascribing every word a set of numbers (or vector), a computer can be trained to understand the actual meaning of these words.

The rest of the article is worth summoning to red, but it isn’t as enlightening as it might be. Neither is http://www.quora.com/What-are-thought-vectors but it makes the attempt. I would guess that “thought vectors” might be “lists” in LISP, lists of word and concepts that a word brings to mind, but that is not much like a vector in mathematics. What would be the “curl” of a thought vector?

I ask out of ignorance; there has been so much use of mathematical concepts in the Voodoo Sciences that I am preternaturally suspicious that this is more of same, wanting to sound scientific; but of course I am most probably wrong. Each word carries with it a whole host of concepts which could conveniently be placed in a list. I would have thought a matrix would be more likely. The trick would be to find an algorithm for placing the concept: higher or lower, closer or farther away? I know that in my novel Starswarm (audio http://www.amazon.com/Starswarm-Jerry-Pournelle/dp/1441785086 )(Kindle http://www.amazon.com/Starswarm-Jerry-Pournelle-ebook/dp/B006O1XF6U for some strange reason put in with children’s books) I had the AL program tell her ward that she was governed by a “table” of preferences she was not allowed to change; I thought of having her say matrix which in my concept of AI would be more appropriate, but Gwen is talking to an 11 year old boy who would not yet understand matrices; but as I explain in The Voodoo Sciences (http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/voodoo.html) novelists only have to be plausible; I didn’t really have much of a theory of AI technology in the sense that I had done much work on it.

I can cheer thought vectors on, but from the little I have seen of them, it is mostly hope, not science.

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

Chaos Manor View, Monday, June 01, 2015

The Nebula Awards are in Chicago at the end of this week – not last week as I mistakenly said – so I had breakfast with Larry Niven Sunday, and he won’t get his Grand Master award for a couple of days. And I am typing worse than ever.

NSA spying

I fully expect a comment on your blog about Rand Paul’s efforts on this matter.

B-

This is one of several emails I have on this subject. The question is complex, and complicated by actions we have taken in the last two decades. It’s made more complicated because while I am recovering from the stroke, my typing is still very slow and I have many corrections to make in each sentence. I think that will improve when I get an actual office chair in here rather than this wheel chair which is the wrong height. Or I think so. I will do an essay on liberty and security, but I fear it may take a few days.

The Patriot Act needs some revisions, and the effect of all this (http://time.com/3902801/rand-paul-nsa-phone-patriot-act/ ) will be more on the Republican nomination than long term on NSA. Just what records do we keep, and should the government keep them? Phone records have long been kept by the phone companies. It is all part of the liberty vs. security question in the new technological age.

Ian Bremmer says America is no longer ‘indispensable’, and that’s bad news for Britain – Telegraph

Jerry:

This interview and the book might interest you.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11640302/Exclusive-interview-Ian-Bremmer-says-America-is-no-longer-indispensible-and-thats-bad-news-for-Britain.html

I present this to you in context of our ongoing debate over destroying ISIS.

My emerging, militant neo-isolationism is in part motivated by a recognition of the new realities that Mr. Bremmer articulates far better than I can. I think your lingering anger at Bush and his neo-con advisers blinds you to the profound incompetency, perhaps intentional, of the Obama administration and how severe the damage has been.

The fact that Bush made some blunders during the invasion of Iraq is indisputable. However; given what we now know about the corruption in the Iraq oil for food program and the ongoing surrender to Iran’s nuclear ambitions to appease Russia, China and our European “allies,” there is no plausible scenario that would not have resulted in: Saddam or a Baathist successor remaining in power, the sanctions being lifted, and Iraq reconstituting it’s nuclear weapons program. Bush corrected his mistakes by allying the US with Sunni moderates and implementing the surge. When Bush left office, Iraq was on a path of stable evolution towards some semblance of a secular democracy provided that the US was willing to maintain a stabilizing long term military presence just as we did in Europe after WW-2.

Obama betrayed the Sunnis as well as the Kurds by refusing to negotiate a status of forces agreement that would have kept Iraq stable. Obama then betrayed Mubarak who had been a US ally for three decades by inciting the Arab Spring uprising. General Sissi has restored a semblance of sanity to Egypt and has allied with Israel, but he will never trust the US again. Obama also betrayed Daffy Gadaffy had surrendered his WMD to Bush and Condi Rice by supporting pro to-ISIS rebels against him. The video of Gadaffy being sodomized with a bayonet will ensure that no dictator will ever trust the US to negotiate a departure from power or surrender their WMD. Assad might make a deal with Israel, but he will never do so with America.

My point here is that Obama has inflicted so much damage to US power and credibility that even if a competent campaign could be waged against ISIS (not possible while the poverty pimp from Chicago remains in the oval office), the result will be only a short term gain. Given Obama’s fecklessness, the Kurds would be no more likely to trust the US or support US policy than ISIS. With ISIS defeated, most of Iraq will inevitably become a province of the emerging, nuclear armed, Persian empire.

I understand that if ISIS is permitted to exist, ISIS is likely to wage a nuclear 9-11 against the US. However; even if ISIS is destroyed, one or more of the other emerging nuclear powers will launch a nuclear 9-11. While a nuclear 9-11 would be traumatic, it would be survivable. Continued US interventionism with someone as imbecilic as Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush or Lindsey Graham as President will not be survivable. We need to retreat, now!

James Crawford=

And we have this comment on an earlier post::

Caliphate

In response to Mr. Crawford, please direct him to the map of the Umayyid Caliphate: 

http://islamiccoins.ancients.info/umayyads/umayyadhistory.htm

ISIS has stated as much that they wish to expand beyond these previous conquests.  

s/f

Couv

David Couvillon
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; 
Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; 
Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; 
Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; 
Chef de Hot Dog Excellance;  Avoider of Yard Work

Can we avoid involvement in the territorial disputes of the Near East, and how do we restore the reputation of the United States? Mr. Crawford is correct: after the Libya disaster, it has become clear that giving up your nuclear weapons and knuckling under to the US will not save you. Idi Amin Dada managed to live in exile with the help of Khadafy, then Saudi Arabia; but that was before the destruction of Libya.

I do not lightly advocate another US involvement in Iraq, and soon the question will be moot: given enough time, the destruction of the Caliphate would require a war effort that the people of the US would never support.

A sitting US Senator proposes criminalizing dissent on ‘climate change’.

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fossil-fuel-industrys-campaign-to-mislead-the-american-people/2015/05/29/04a2c448-0574-11e5-8bda-c7b4e9a8f7ac_story.html>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Any discussion of liberty and freedom must take account of this: the temptation to win debates by silencing the opponent is near irresistible when you are a True Believer. The noblest of sentiments may be refuted if their bearer is beaten to death with a rubber truncheon, said Goering; and there are those who believe strongly that the Global Warming debate is more important than the Bill of Rights and rational debate.

There are many other topics which are so offensive to influential groups that they simply cannot be discussed: to bring up the topic in Injustice and must be suppressed.

You may find these worth looking at.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/story-tom-ligon?trk=hp-feed-article-title

http://www.tomligon.com/Writing/Sparkof1812.pdf

http://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-1431124660

John DeChancie sends this

My new Castle Perilous novel is out–THE PIRATES OF PERILOUS. It’s the ninth of the series, but it reads like the first, with a bit of backstory.

The Pirates of Perilous (Castle Perilous Series) (Volume 9)

The Pirates of Perilous (Castle Perilous Series) (Volume 9) The Pirates of Perilous (Castle Perilous Series) (Volume 9) [John DeChancie] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The long-awaited 9th book in the beloved CASTLE PERILOUS fantasy series. Castle Perilous is a dangerous place to live. But some of its Guests are dange…
View on www.amazon.com	Preview by Yahoo

There are fans waiting for this in paper. The Kindle version will be out later in the year.

jd

From a physicist friend; a list of sources on climate technology uncertainty.

Subject: Several articles of technical interest

https://www.google.com/#q=error+analysis+climate+modeling

https://www.google.com/#q=Uncertainty+analysis+in+climate

https://www.google.com/#q=uncertainty+analysis+in+climate+change+assessments

See particularly

http://www.stat.washington.edu/peter/statclim/fyfeetal.pdf

Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years

http://nldr.library.ucar.edu/repository/assets/osgc/OSGC-000-000-019-903.pdf

Uncertainty analysis in climate change assessments

(which appears to be the manuscript of the article shown at the end of the above pdf) and includes the following “box”:

BOX 1
Recommendations to improve uncertainty quantification
· Replace qualitative assessments of uncertainty with quantitative ones
· Reduce uncertainties in trend estimates for climate observations and
projections through use of modern statistical methods for spatio-temporal data
· Increase the accuracy with which the climate is monitored by combining
various sources of information using hierarchical statistical models
· Reduce uncertainties in climate change projections by applying experimental
design to make more efficient use of computational resources
· Quantify changes in the likelihood of extreme weather events in a manner
more useful to decision makers by using methods based on the statistical
theory of extreme values
· Include at least one author with expertise in uncertainty analysis on all
chapters of IPCC and U.S. national assessments

with Dr. Curry’s commentary

http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/30/inadequate-uncertainty-analysis-in-climate-change-assessments/

and the absurd (and contradictory of the above) contention

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150202114636.htm

Global warming slowdown: No systematic errors in climate models, comprehensive statistical analysis reveals

(abstract only; did not attack paywall when abstract so obviously nonsensical)

Plus this fundamental statistical paper

http://www.climateaccess.org/sites/default/files/Katz_Techniques%20for%20Estimating%20Uncertainty.pdf

I am trying to find fundamental papers on numerical solution which address the synergistic effects between data errors and computational errors, but those for some reason appear to be difficult to find.

Here are more technical papers . 

I do not claim that these are particularly readable.  I have done advanced studies in statistical theory, but I haven’t done this sort of work in decades. 

From the Washington Post

Microsoft’s all-new Windows 10 debuts on July 29 (WP)

By Hayley Tsukayama June 1 at 10:51 AM

Microsoft announced Monday that Windows 10 will be available for sale for July 29. Most people — especially Microsoft diehards — won’t have to buy a copy next month, however. The company’s offering free upgrades to most devices currently running Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1.

Qualifying Microsoft customers can register to get their free July upgrade right now; instructions are on Microsoft’s Web site.

Users will be upgraded to the corresponding version of Windows that they already have. For example, if you have Windows 7 Home Basic or Home Premium, you’ll be upgraded to Windows 10 Home. If you have Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate, you’ll be upgraded to Windows 10 Pro.

So what do you get from the new system? For one, you get Microsoft’s Cortana voice assistant, which is able to schedule your appointments, send your messages and will be able to interact with your Windows, Android or iOS phone. The company has also included features that will make it easier to pass information between a PC and a Windows Phone.

Microsoft also ditched its long-time, much-hated browser, Internet Explorer in the new system in favor of a browser called “Microsoft Edge.” The browser is faster from stem-to-stern, and also includes an annotation feature that lets you type or write on Web pages if you want to keep notes.

The company has also updated its music, video,  photos, mail, calendar and contact apps. It’s also added an Xbox app, which will let a user’s PC and Xbox game console communicate more closely; gamers will be able to stream games from their Xbox One to PCs in their homes. The upgrade also comes with new versions of OneNote and Outlook; upgraded versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint will be sold separately.

This will be a major launch for  Microsoft, which is looking to shed its image as a plodding giant in favor a friendlier, more nimble company that plays nice with gadgets and programs made by competitors such as Apple, Samsung and Google. It’s also focusing more on offering services rather than products, so Windows 10 will be constantly updated like mobile operating systems, or Apple’s OS X, rather the familiar release model of putting a finished product on a CD and meddling with it very little until the next major update.

That change may have enabled Microsoft to accelerate its timeline — new Windows updates have tended to come in the fall, as of late — but also means that some features won’t be a part of the initial Windows 10 release. For example, as Ars Technica reported, features such as extension support for the new Edge browser won’t be coming until a later update.

If you’re interested in upgrading your own computer, you can do so from your own Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 computer by clicking on the small Windows icon on the lower right-hand side of your toolbar, which takes you to the “Get Windows 10” app. (The app should show up automatically on qualifying machines to which you have administrative privileges.) The same app should give you confirmation that your reservation went through.

You can cancel your upgrade at any time before the system launches, and you will also be able  to get the upgrade even if you don’t reserve a copy ahead of time — but  Microsoft says this is “easiest way” to get Windows 10.

It’s sure got to be better than Windows 8

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