Mail 683 Monday July 11, 2011

· Letter from Mariposa

· The View from Tycho

· No Longer a Space Faring Nation

· Farewell to the Archduke

·

[Note: I am still experimenting. There will be lines and other stuff in here. I hope it’s not too distracting.]

And BYTE is back http://www.informationweek.com/byte/

Many prominent UK politicians have an Oxford PPE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy,_Politics_and_Economics . This is considered to be a dilettante’s degree, consisting in American terms of three minors–a year of philosophy, a year of political science, and a year of economics, none studied in depth. In particular, no training in law or history or anything quantitative. They begin to be involved in politics during their three years at university, and move to the big leagues at graduation, where there is a real tendency for them to get in over their heads.

Phone hacking story: http://tinyurl.com/44rm8mq

Blair commenting on where Labour went wrong: http://tinyurl.com/3q8w3y8 "Parties of the left have a genetic tendency to cling to an analysis that they lose because the leadership is insufficiently committed to being left, defined in a very traditional sense. There’s always a slightly curious problem with this analysis since usually they have lost to a rightwing party. But somehow that inconvenient truth is put to the side."

UK inflation up: http://tinyurl.com/425jv4g

Boat thief caught in action: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-14076170

Imported tech spiked with vulnerabilities: http://tinyurl.com/642q6hk

Jim Dunnigan’s comments on tech war: http://tinyurl.com/3p2s4tm . I tried to get a program going to teach security engineering in the UK, but it didn’t recruit enough students to sustain it. Not the easiest subject to learn, and most UK students take difficulty into account when they choose their MSc program. Those who we did recruit did very well, but students that good are rare. Students who take my final year module in that area seem to regard it highly and find it often leads to a job.

The second person to subscribe to my new wordpress blog http://crowan-scat.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw/ViewFromEngland/ is a known blog spammer…

I don’t know what to say about the vote to kill the James Webb Space Telescope: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/science/07webb.html

—

"We do not understand how a country,… can produce people who seem to be acting without thinking, let alone making serious efforts to investigate the consequences of their actions." (Mary Evans in the Times Higher Education)

Harry Erwin

It is only recently that politicians’ education has been important in getting elected. College degrees were not much of a qualification: what was important was life experience, particularly for executive off and especially as President. The one time Harry Truman ran for President he could list as qualification that he was President of the United States. I doubt anyone reading this knows what, if any, Truman’s college experience was. Eisenhower was a West Point graduate. Nixon didn’t depend on his college qualifications. Kennedy liked to pretend to a better education than he had – he was an indifferent student – and relied on academia to supply him with advisors. Over time there has been a tendency to plead credentials, but it has never been a strong American tradition.

I would be curious to know why the phone hacking scandal resulted in actually folding the News of the World. That seems a bit drastic.

WSJ links

When I want to send a WSJ link to someone I search Google with the full title then click on news on the left side. The WSJ article comes up. This link is a referral link and must come from Google. I then copy the URL for the search and attach it to as a link in my email. Example:

The Road to Serfdom and the Arab Revolt http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=The+Road+to+Serfdom+and+the+Arab+Revolt#q=The+Road+to+Serfdom+and+the+Arab+Revolt&hl=en&prmd=ivnsu&source=lnms&tbm=nws&ei=o9oXTsq-K5OosAORtLHVDQ&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=4&ved=0CBYQ_AUoAw&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=f7da403014ea4f31&biw=1392&bih=815

WSJ wants to be at the top of the Google search returns, but to do that they have to allow someone to follow the link. The compromise seems to be that if you find it by Google with the right kind of search, you can see the whole story by going to the WSJ-on-line link.

iPhone update –

Hi Jerry,

There’s widespread expectation that an update will be released in around September – probably more of an evolutionary change, but one of the big ones is a dual-mode CDMA/GSM phone. That would allow you to migrate to whatever carrier you want (once the contract is up of course).

I always check the MacRumors buying guide at http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/ before making a major Apple purchase. They have the timing pretty well recorded, and have kept me from buyers remorse more than once.

Cheers,

Doug

I understood that, which is why I didn’t just buy an iPhone 4 on the spot, but I will probably get one. My wife simply can’t use and iPhone and we are looking at something with a physical keyboard that has a camera and other smartphone features. Pocket size isn’t so important for her. Being able to use the keyboard is. I admit that I have some problems pecking away on the iPhone keyboard; the best of the pocket phone devices I ever tried as an old RIM way way back when. I could actually write quite quickly with two thumbs with that. I have never been able to write anything worth keeping and not much worth sending as a note with the iPhone, but hope springs eternal…

In my experience there is no reliable way to find out what’s going on at Apple. We all used to have our sources out on the infinite loop, but it’s now easier to find out what’s going on in Plans than get reliable info on Apple’s intentions – at least that’s my experience, and Leo Laporte seems to have the same experience.

Subject: News as satire Down Under: Saving the world from farting camels

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/4480/australian-kill-a-camel-scheme-attacked

Steve Chu

Tycho’s central peak from the LRO

Jerry,

The LRO provides some astonishing pictures

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Tycho itself

<http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/uploads/wac_tycho_highphase.png>

Tycho’s central peak from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter with an "egg" on top <http://lpod.wikispaces.com/July+1%2C+2011>

The "egg" brought down to Earth to see how it compares to something we know.

<http://lpod.wikispaces.com/July+8%2C+2011>

Tycho brought down to Earth and compared to Tokyo (so does Kaguya/Selene as well!) <http://lpod.wikispaces.com/September+12%2C+2008>

The start of the LRO featured pictures

<http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc_browse?page=1>

RE: No Longer a Space Faring Nation

Jerry,

Upon landing of Atlantis, I will be keeping track of how long we are no longer a space faring nation. From Freedom 7 to today we have had a little over 50 years as such a nation.

I did not expect to see Heinlein’s hiatus. I take some solace in that you have said that we will be back on the moon, but with the important caveat that it may not be with US citizens. This is not much solace. I need to remember that despair is a sin.

I hope to know who the real D.D. Harriman is before I die. We need a "Person to Sell the Moon."

Regards, Charles Adams

==

As I think I established in A Step Farther Out, most of the resources available to mankind are out there, not on Earth. We are already mining miles and miles down. Mining the Moon would be easier, except for the big energy penalties for getting to the Moon. Yet much of the cost of space travel is due to design and ignoring operations costs: we established a preference for performance over operations in design priorities way back in Apollo because we were in a race; Shuttle was designed to employ 22,000 development scientists and technicians, and it met its objective nicely. Reusable ships designed to be reused, not rebuilt, and designed to have efficient operations, not employ lots of people (hundreds of launch consoles for Shuttle!) can make space travel an affordable cost for rewards. I went all over that in A Step Farther Out and there’s no point in making the argument again. America may wake up and discover that path; if not, the Chinese, Japanese, Indonesia – someone will find it. Mankind will go to space.

The Archduke and Prince Imperial is dead

Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xavier Felix

Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius von Habsburg-Lothringen has died at

his home on the Starnbergzee

—

Russell Seitz

==

He was a very distant relative, and a patron of two of the orders of which I am honored to hold membership in. I never met him, but I knew some of his friends, and corresponded occasionally with Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn who knew him fairly well. Possony had met him. Knowing he was a distant relative I took care to read some of his works when I was an undergraduate. It may or may not be significant that I remember little of them. From all accounts, though, he would have made a good Emperor. It has always been my belief that Wilson’s utter opposition to the monarchy and his imposition of his system in Europe was the biggest disaster of World War I; Europe would have been a lot better off had the Austrian empire survived, But that is another story and another argument. My favorite story is when the Archduke was asked his view of the Austria-Hungary World Cup soccer match. His response was “Against whom is the team playing?”

= = =

End of EU? for real this time

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/danish-committee-approves-governments-controversial-border-control-plans/2011/07/01/AG5eEKtH_story.html

——–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Articles: The Purposeful Flooding of America’s Heartland –

Of course, we have some of the usual collection of Watermelon Greens screaming that the Midwest floods were caused by CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming). Rational analysis of the situation may lead one in another direction.

The Purposeful Flooding of America’s Heartland

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/the_purposeful_flooding_of_americas_heartland.html

Regards,

Jim Riticher

Mail 682 Tuesday July 5, 2011

• A Fourth of July Flash Crowd
• The Day is Done

This ought to have been posted yesterday.

         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FATQ0ayQXsA

Jim

It is certainly worth watching. Exuberant.

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Hary Brown

It’s a Michael Caine movie now available to stream on Netflix. He is a pensioner who chum is killed by the local gangbangers. But Harry was a Royal Marine once.

John

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Dwight David Eisenhower

I have not seen that, but this is a favorite plot with me. I even liked Streets of Fire which had a similar theme. I like stories in which bad guys pick the wrong victim…

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DSK

So, DSK gets put on suicide watch at Rikers until he resigns from the IMF — this is all before the investigation occurs. The maid is connected to the mob, etc. Now, like a row of sharkteeth the next accuser stands ready to put this guy away. This is so blatantly obvious.

——–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

It does seem rather a parody of real justice. We still don’t know everything but where is all the money coming from?

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The Day is Done

I was struck by your comments concerning “The Day is Done” and agree with your thoughts on the decline of education in the face of increasing money spent on it. My students (I teach CS at a liberal arts college) often seem to resent the idea that earning the grade they want involves a great deal of talent and time investment. Most come out of high schools with GPAs > 4 with homework commitments of less than an hour a week. Of course, the shift has been going on for a while. I still remember an episode of “The Brady Bunch” where Greg was forced to watch/help his father recite “The Day is Done” at a school show; the point was that such old poetry had no place in the “hip” world he inhabited. And, in elementary school in the late 70s, I was considered strange for picking Kipling’s “If” to memorize for a class poetry day. On the other hand, my 83 year old father can still recite “The Gettysburg Address” and Leigh Hunt’s “Abou Ben Adhem” flawlessly—they and many other pieces shaped his worldview.

kenny

Kenny Moorman

Abou Ben Adhem, may his tribe increase– Sixth Grade. It’s in the California Sixth Grade Reader I am working into a (public domain so very minimum priced) eBook. Along with a number of other poems and stories we all once knew or at least had heard of. Like Horatius at the Bridge. Incidentally you can find Horatius and the other Lays of Ancient Rome on this site with a short introduction.

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Subject: Researchers create rollerball-pen ink to draw circuits

Almost like Motie technology:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-rollerball-pen-ink-circuits.html

Tracy

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A bit of hope for alternative fuels –

http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Oil/6245497

Alternative fuels for the military need to be “drop-in”: Navy Sec’y

I see real hope for alternative fuels and Mabus says why I think it can happen, “The sheer size of the military needs, Mabus said, means that “what we can do, what the military can do, is we can bring a market.”

I hope.

R,

Rose

Bringing a market is often all that is needed. If NASA had done space that way…

= =

Subj: Good nukes! TVA signs letter of intent to buy B&W small modular reactors

http://www.babcock.com/news_and_events/2011/20110616a.html

>>The Babcock & Wilcox Company (B&W) (NYSE:BWC) announced today that Generation mPower LLC (GmP), a majority-owned subsidiary of Babcock & Wilcox Nuclear Energy, Inc., has signed a letter of intent with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that defines the project plans and associated conditions for designing, licensing and constructing up to six B&W mPower small modular reactors (SMRs) at TVA’s Clinch River site in Roane County, Tenn. … GmP remains on track to deploy the first B&W mPower reactor by 2020 at TVA’s Clinch River site. …<<

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

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Fallen Angels – life imitates art.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/04/us-climate-sulphur-idUSTRE7634IQ20110704

—

Roland Dobbins

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‘The man who makes war without the approval of elected legislators is no longer a president, but a king.’

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/the_man_who_would_be_king.html

The King of England constitutionally had the right to make war on whom he pleased. He needed Parliament to pay for it. Congress was explicitly given that power in the Constitution with the English precedent in mind.

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Obama Losing Canada’s Oil to China

Jerry,

This story really requires no comment from me, but I’ll point out that given a pipeline the US would have a competitive advantage that would enable the purchase of Canadian oil at a discount. We are all going to have to learn how to walk.

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/BarackObama-FredUpton-China-Oil/2011/07/02/id/402295?s=al&promo_code=C8BF-1

Jim Crawford

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Littoral Ship Corroding: USN cut protection from specs

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/06/shipbuilder-blames-navy-as-brand-new-warship-disintegrates

Gee, whoda thunk it? Steel + aluminum + salt water? Naa, don’ need no cathodic protection system…

—

73s/Best regards de John Bartley K7AAY

Amateur Radio – the first technology based social network

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Day Book and off-line “blogging”

Dear Jerry,

I’m a long-time reader of your great stuff.

First, i wish you the best with your health.

Second, i am also very interested in the issues you raise, including “sequence of blog posts” and “day book”…

“The business of chronological and blogological order still needs resolution. Not much I can do about that either, except to try to keep various bundles of thoughts together rather than letting them get spread out across a number of separate posts. That requires a bit of forethought, which means that the concept of a day book, a log of one’s thoughts and actions for the day, gets lost and nearly impossible. That needs rethinking because this was conceived as a day book, not a “blog” as that has come to be understood.”

One software that addresses some of this is called MacJournal (http://www.marinersoftware.com/products/macjournal/) which may give you some of what you want, including keeping the master copy of your blog posts on your local machine. I am just starting to use it, and learn its capabilities, but it looks promising.

Take care,

Tom

Rick is working on a plan that will allow viewing this place in any order one likes. It takes a bit to develop. We’ll see. Stay tuned…

Mail 681 Friday July 1, 2011 – 3

Duties and Rights

Regarding your comment re responsibilities versus benefits, the Google Ngram of “duties” versus “rights” tells the story.

http://m-francis.livejournal.com/203878.html

Mike

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Dept. of Agriculture Spending

Victor Davis Hanson points out in the link below that the Dept. of Agriculture annual budget is greater than the entire nation’s annual net farm income this year. Somehow that doesn’t make good sense to me.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304450604576415880239918492.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Good luck with the new system. What you have to say will always be worth reading, irrespective of what it looks like. We know you’ll figure it out.

Best Regards,

— Lindy Sisk

I recall way back in the Eisenhower Administration there was an effort to have a public law to the effect that there could never be more employees of the Department of Agriculture than there were farmers and farm workers. That failed every time it was proposed.

I would think, though, that given the financial circumstances we could eliminate the entire group of inspectors and supervisors who enforce the regulation that stage magicians must have a Federal license to keep rabbits, and anyone who sells rabbits as pets (although not if they sell them to eat or to feed alive to serpents) must have a Federal license. Perhaps when we are rich again we can afford such people but surely we can do without them now? Incidentally if a stage performer slays and eats alive a rabbit he does not need a Federal license; only if the rabbit is used as a pet in a performance. And grown people enforce this.

The lesson is clear. There are a lot of Federal jobs that we can spare in these troubled times; many people doing things that we can do without, certainly that we do not have to borrow money to pay for. Why is there never such discussion in debt ceiling debates?

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Bill Quick on CA vs. Amazon

http://dailypundit.com/?p=41973

Somebody ran the numbers and reached the conclusion I immediately suspected. Driving away Amazon is going to result in a serious loss of tax revenue rather than the intended gain.

It’s like trying to get through grocery shopping with a grabby toddler in the cart.

Eric

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TSA – another astonishing gaffe

Message Body:

Dear Jerry,

I am sure you have read this, and probably had a flood of email about it too, but there is a story in today’s LA Times about a man making flights with someone else’s expired boarding pass and no valid id. He was detected (but not arrested) after passengers ‘complained that the man seated in 3E reeked of body odor’. I find it difficult to comment on this – I am filled with outrage over the indignities I have endured in the name of flight security, and incensed that this man was allowed to travel (apparently many times) like this.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0701-airport-security-20110630,0,2315584.story

Regards,

Dave Checkley

PS I find the new site layout interesting. It is very good for reading the most current stuff, but when I went back and tried to reread a whole week I found myself wishing that the order was reversed.

PPS I probably should have done a separate email on this, except that my comment is so slight. Analog are running a serial (Energized) by Edward M. Lerner on Space Solar Power (and terrorists hijacking the system and frying various industrial complexes on earth). I suppose it is a cautionary against this technology, although I haven’t read the final installment yet.

I am trying to figure out how to set things up as we used to do. Some read this daily or several times a day. Others once or twice a week. Clearly the old order was better for those who come here at intervals not several times a day. We will see what we can do. There must be a way.

It’s very hard to turn a solar power satellite into a sun gun. That was one of the first things we thought of back in the original Boeing proposal I worked on. A long time ago. Sun guns require high energy densities and the ability to keep the beam collimated when it is off target. That’s pretty hard to do even if you are the legitimate owner of the SSPS, and we don’t think hijackers can do it at all, whether they hijack the ground control room or actually get to space… As Wina Sturgeon asked me once, the only way I know of to make a nuclear power plant explode with a nuclear blast is to smuggle in a nuke…

As to TSA and its kabuki security theater, why are you surprised?