Mail 767 Sunday, March 17, 2013

Mark Steyn on Overreach

Jerry,

Mark Steyn in his piece "Axis of Torpor" starts with a sarcastic strafing pass on Hollywood international relations – "I greatly enjoy the new Hollywood genre in which dysfunctional American families fly to a foreign city and slaughter large numbers of the inhabitants as a kind of bonding experience" – but ends with something that sounds remarkably like he’s channeling you.

"As the CPAC crowd suggested, there are takers on the right for the Rand Paul position. There are many on the left for Obama’s drone-alone definition of great power. But there are ever fewer takers for a money-no-object global hegemon that spends 46 percent of the world’s military budget and can’t impress its will on a bunch of inbred goatherds. A broker America needs to learn to do more with less, and to rediscover the cold calculation of national interest rather than waging war as the world’s largest NGO. In dismissing Paul as a “wacko bird,”

John McCain and Lindsey Graham assume that the too-big-to-fail status quo is forever. It’s not; it’s already over."

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/343140

Porkypine

I suppose I have been saying things like that since this site began, and before; I hope someone has paid attention. There do not seem to be very many of us realists yet. I prefer a republic to empire. Incompetent empire is an absurdity, except, of course, for the obvious exceptions. Follow the money.

Competent empire frightens me, but I prefer it to incompetent empire. Competent empire doesn’t expend its own blood and treasure on liberating Iraq and then abandoning it. But that is another story.

The establishment Republicans seem enamoured of expending blood and treasure without favorable results.

Survival with Style — Water for More People!

Jerry,

This is very good news indeed.

<http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/03/16/lockhead-martin-throws-more-dirt-of-mathus-grave/>

"Cheap, clean water may soon be available for the whole planet. According to Reuters, defense contractor Lockheed Martin has developed a filter that will hugely reduce the amount of energy necessary to turn sea water into fresh water. The filter, which is five hundred times thinner then others currently available, lets water pass through but blocks all salt molecules. It will use almost 100 times less energy than other methods for making salt water drinkable, giving third world countries another way of expanding access to drinking water without having to create costly pumping stations…."

I remember your story about having "special ice cubes" to be used to make a point to Luddites. I always enjoy the image of them spitting out the drink after being informed the ice is made from the LA river water. Then the grand finale, "using the best filtering possible!"

Ain’t technology grand? For some things, yes, yes it is.

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Technology won’t solve all problems but proper application of technology will reduce many problems to soluble multiple problems. A new source of fresh water would do that for a number of problem situations.

: Molten salt reactors

The molten salt concept is gaining in popularity as it does appear to have the passive safety and low-waste properties mentioned. Possibly even better is the LFTR (liquid flouride thorium reactor), a variant that uses thorium for the fuel instead of uranium. Thorium is much more abundant than uranium, and has the advantage of not producing any waste product that can easily be used in bombs. (This, by the way, is likely one of the reasons uranium was originally chosen over thorium). The ability to burn existing nuclear waste and to produce Pu238 (used to fuel spacecraft) are advantages the two concepts share. Another advantage is that because of the much higher melting point of the molten salt, there is no need for high-pressure vessels as in conventional reactors (the salt takes the place of water as the primary working fluid). This enormously increases the safety yet again. The main problem holding these concepts back seems to be the huge investment required for a new design.

Chris Barker

As I said in A Step Farther Out, cheap energy solves most problems; and if your philosophy is one of distribution of resources, then it helps to have a large pie to distribute. But it does require insight. The initial capital costs of Space Solar Power Satellites and a new nuclear power system are comparable. I’d prefer space solar power because the side effects are beneficial and large.

Random House eBook imprints offers contracts that would make a music executive blush

Jerry,

If you encounter aspiring writers who don’t have an agent, it’s worth noting that Random house has some eBook imprints that are trying to snare new writers with lousy contract terms. One is an SF imprint.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/03/06/a-contract-from-alibi/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/03/06/note-to-sff-writers-random-houses-hydra-imprint-has-appallingly-bad-contract-terms/

Writers should understand that publishers want everything they can get. It is the writer’s job to see that they don’t get it.

RE: North Korea and the revealer rattling of cutlery by them to gain attention and goodies.

You often have said that you prefer a Republic, but if Empire we must, let it be Competent Empire.

I agree. However, which sort of Competent Empire? We have legions with auxiliaries and Pro-Consuls (usually inept hacks of the Bremer sort, but even Caesar had to put up with those), classic Latin Roman stuff in Afghanistan and Iraq, and most of Latin America is Classic Roman Ally sort of statecraft, down to the "poke A Stick In The Roman (Yanqui) Eye but don’t mess with Roman (Yanqui) Trade.

But then we have the OTHER Roman Empire model, the one Gibbon renamed Byzantine, though the "Byzantine" never called themselves anything other than Roman, though in Greek. Those Romans never had a problem doing the math on whether it was cheaper to Pay Off the Thugs and Barbarians rather than dispatch a Strategoi and several legions of cataphracts to crush them.

We seem to follow that policy with North Korea, and not just because they have a few Hell Bombs to rattle. We followed it long before they went Plutonium on us, for all sort of reasons involving our allies in the region and the Chinese Hordes ("Hey, Sarge, just how many Hordes are there in a Chinese Platoon, anyway?").

In life consistency is the most under rated virtue. In statecraft this is true Doubled in Big Casino with Spades.

The NORKs are hooked on our bribes. Now they want more, and we are going broke.

Oh well, with any luck one of those Horrible Anti-Missile programs the current regime in DC abhors will save us. By the way, doesn’t the current Caudillo in DC have a Pied A Terre in Hawaii? Well within range of even the Kaputnik level rocketeers of the NORKS.

Want to bet there is an AEFGS vclass destroyer/cruiser just offshore from that vacation home?

Petronius

Welcome back. For those wondering about the reference to hordes, it comes from Col Fehrenbach’s excellent history of the Korean War, This Kind of War, which is up there with Cameron’s Anatomy of Military Merit as a must read book for anyone interested in military theory and why men fight.

Competent empire does know how to use bribes, but the best way is to bribe one enemy to fight another. Aetius, sometimes called the Last Roman, understood this full well, to the point at which he kept his Gothic Allies from exterminating the Huns after Chalons: he knew he would have need of the Huns another time. His Emperor decided that he didn’t need Aetius and killed him with his own hand, a deed known popularly at the time as “Caesar has cut off his right hand with his left.” The Emperor did not last much longer: his soldiers watched as another general struck him down on the Campus Martius.

None of this would make sense to our current rulers, who have read neither Gibbon nor Macauley, and probably are not aware of their existence.

Tri-focal computer glasses,

Jerry

Like you, I use tri-focals for daily wear and bifocal computer glasses when I am at my computer. Thank you for inventing the latter. I go to A.J. Pone Optical here in New Jersey, where Dave Pone has been grinding me my custom lenses for several years. In formed they were ready, today I went to pick up new glasses in updated prescriptions.

And Dave had a surprise for me. “Ed,” he says, “You’re just the man for this. I’m trying an experiment on you.” He said he received some trifocal blanks from a lens supplier, and he thought he would try something new. Given that I surf the Net at 40 inches but I like to read papers and things at a normal distance, he sent a pair of blank tri-focal lenses to “the lab” to have them ground to my prescription for the far (40 inches) and near, with the middle magnification falling between them. Coated with anti-glare and finished with a hard layer, the lab sent them back to his shop where he ground them for my frames.

Glory be! They work! I can sit back and enjoy my browsing, sit forward and type at the screen, or look down and read, with the proper magnification for each. Seems like the best ideas are those that in retrospect you say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Thought you’d like to know of an innovation on your invention.

Ed

I should say that I can make a case for having invented “computer glasses.” I have worn bi-focal glasses for more than sixty years. After I built Ezekiel, my friend who happened to be an S-100 Buss computer, I found bi-focals to be annoying and asked my optometrist to make me a pair of glasses in my prescription with a focal length of 28 inches. This worked well, and I wrote that up in one of my BYTE columns, and I believe I called them my “computer glasses.” Later I found they were ubiquitous. It may have been simultaneous invention – anyone with bifocals might find it obvious – but I think I was the first to publish the notion; and the 28 inches came from my sitting at the computer and using a tape measure to determine the distance from my eyes to the screen.  I have experimented with other distances and found that with my prescription it isn’t critical and 28 inches continues to work.

I never suspected that my computer glasses couldn’t be improved.

Modern slavery

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I’ve been doing some research on slavery and learned a few things that may be of interest.

I quickly learned that there are more slaves today than at any time in our history. The great majority of these are debt contracted slaves (forced to work off a debt) or sex slaves.

That rang a bell. So I researched a little more and, sure enough, found that all these evils still flourish in the US among Mexican immigrants. All the laws about minimum wage, workplace safety, health and so forth are meaningless when they are applied to workers who have no legal existence in the first place. Many of them are forced to take debts and labor in backbreaking conditions for next to nothing. Not a few are sex slaves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/world/americas/mexico-sex-slavery-ring-on-border-is-broken-immigration-officials-say.html?_r=0 <http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2013%2F01%2F30%2Fworld%2Famericas%2Fmexico-sex-slavery-ring-on-border-is-broken-immigration-officials-say.html%3F_r%3D0&h=4AQHxB4Yi&s=1>

http://www2.palmbeachpost.com/moderndayslavery/

http://www.mediamouse.org/news/2006/02/the-realities-o.php

Naturally, the people who oppose this state of affairs and insist that all residents of the US should be legal and have protection of American law are dubbed "RAAAACIST!" I would have thought that demanding brown-skinned people labor as slaves for white-skinned agribusiness would be more "racist" then demanding equal protection of law for all in the US, but this is America. Up is down, black is white.

What can we do about it? Well, I’m an educator by gift so that’s what I do — go out and learn things, then pass it on to others.

But i think the first, most revolutionary thing we can do is to believe the truth and refuse to believe lies. Believing and teaching truth is ITSELF a revolutionary activity, especially since so much of the world depends on lies.

And the truth is this: Illegal immigration to the US is all about exploiting cheap labor , NOT about charity.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

There are none so blind as those who will not see. The evidence for widespread slavery in this vale of tears is pervasive. Of course in the Roman Republic debtors were free to sell themselves into slavery to relieve their debt. Laws against prostitution often result in slavery to pimps as a side effect. Good intentions need to be applied with prudence…

Cubans evade censorship by exchanging computer memory sticks, blogger says:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/09/185347/cubans-evade-censorship-by-exchanging.html

“Information circulates hand to hand through this wonderful gadget known as the memory stick,” Sanchez said, “and it is difficult for the government to intercept them. I can’t imagine that they can put a police officer on every corner to see who has a flash drive and who doesn’t.”

Tag. You’re it.

Ed

Jerry,

Unfortunately, the "whole number" method as described by Mike Flynn is hardly a joke.

When the kids (and the nieces) were in school I noted that in fifth grade a wholly inappropriate amount of the math coursework was devoted to estimating the answer to math problems instead of reinforcing the ability to do addition and subtraction.

http://www.glencoe.com/sites/common_assets/mathematics/math_review/Estimate_Whole_Num.pdf

Jim

http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/founders/washington/drones-wisdom-from-our-first-commander-in-chief

Roger Miller

Thank you. Very relevant.

McGuffey Readers

This link is about life of McGuffey and his books called "Eclectic Readers".

http://www.timesdispatch.com/opinion/their-opinion/columnists-blogs/charles-f-bryan-jr/the-man-who-taught-america-to-read-mcguffey/article_f768af21-6700-5377-ad01-650476d7b811.html

Bill Moore

The McGuffey readers helped unite the nation. They were excellent for their time, and still worth finding for home schoolers. They could never be adopted in a public school today. The first words of the Soviet first grade readers were “For the joys of our childhood we thank our native land.” The McGuffey readers began with “No man can put off the law of God” which instantly disqualifies them from public adoption.

Reaffirming the Net of a Thousand Questionable "Facts"…

Dr. P,

I know you generally can trust your readers to share facts instead of innuendo, but whoever forwarded the "All European Life Died In Auschwitz" article should have done at least a cursory search to verify the claims accompanying the article. A quick Google search turned up this 2006 blog entry critiquing the copies already in circulation – a little over a year before the claimed publication date of 15 JAN 2008:

who is Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez and who cares? <http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2006/02/who_is_sebastian_vilar_rodrige.html>

By Bernie on 27 Feb 2006

I can tell a fake when I see one. Before I go into the details let me say that about 100 blogs in the past 6 months repeated the story below and a few like vodkapundit <http://pajamasmedia.com/vodkapundit/2005/11/30/ouch-11/> rightfully had qualms about its

authenticity: ‘With some reservations, I’m posting the translation in full. If it turns out this is a fake, let’s steal a page from the MSM and call it "fake but accurate."’

Here is the post, usually prefaced by Written by Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez, Spanish Writer or "This is a translation of an article from a Spanish newspaper":

All European Life Died In Auschwitz

I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth – Europe died in Auschwitz. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims.

In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world. The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.

And under the pretence of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naïve hosts. And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.

We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for hoping for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.

________________________________

Here are a few problems.

1. The phrasing and syntax look like they were originally written in English but as if translated.

2. I disregard any post as true unless it gives me the name of the paper and date of publication.

3. Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez only exists in these posts.

4. And most importantly – there is no European Paper with the cojones [one can take a cojones test here

<http://www.queendom.com/jff_access/the_cojones_test.htm> ] to actually publish anything this provocative against Muslims. Indeed Spain has been on a push to encourage Muslim immigration since 2004, see Jihadwatch.

<http://www.jihadwatch.org/2004/10/spain-is-seeking-to-integrate-growing-muslim-population.html>

As to "fake but accurate"; it is undoubtedly true that almost all the sentiments expressed in this "article" reflect the Muslim reality in Europe. It is too bad that no paper actually published it.

Update: The email stating that this appeared in a Spanish Newspaper is false. It did however appear on the rightwing, pro-Israel, anti-Communist, Spanish language website Gentiuno <http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2006/03/sebastian_vilar_rodriguez_turn.html> .

I noted that the source was unimportant; the question was whether the concept leads to any truths. It is a disturbing thought. Burnham said that liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide. He said this during the Cold War. The Soviet Union imploded before the West could sink completely, but that does not mean that he was not correct.

Reaffirming the Net of a Thousand Questionable "Facts"…

Dr. P,

As an unapologetic propagandist, my focus is not on the source, it is on protecting fact-based credibility.

One of the most compelling ways to beat opponents in any public debate is to discredit them, and that can be done by showing where they have claimed something provably false. It doesn’t have to be important, it just has to be something they can’t deny saying that just ain’t so. Shifting the focus from what is right to who is telling the truth is akin to throwing dirt in someone’s eyes during a fist-fight — and usually just as effective. Death by a thousand fact-checks, as it were.

That’s why I like the blogger’s label of "fake but accurate" — I expect to find myself using that label frequently, because "apocryphal" seems to have faded from the common vocabulary.

So, when confronting folks denying that the Holocaust ever happened, I think it’s better to correct (or at least identify) known errors up front, even if it takes a little of the pungency away. Why make it easier for them to accuse you of spreading a Big Lie by passing along easily disproved little lies?

      Regards,

      William

"Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well." – John Gardner

Omnibus Bills, Madison & Goo Goos

Jerry,

I read a quote from Madison in the Federalist that is very apropos today and for the past few decades:

The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood: if they be repealed or revised before they are promulg[at]ed, or undergo such incessant changes, that no man who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.

Madison, Federalist 62

One of the more egregious examples in the last year or two is the Affordable Health Care Act–Choose your own example [even the bills for the major departments are great examples too.]

In its defense Speaker Pelosi memorably said:

"You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention-it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.

"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy. Furthermore, we believe that health care reform, again I said at the beginning of my remarks, that we sent the three pillars that the President’s economic stabilization and job creation initiatives were education and innovation-innovation begins in the classroom-clean energy and climate, addressing the climate issues in an innovative way to keep us number one and competitive in the world with the new technology, and the third, first among equals I may say, is health care, health insurance reform. Health insurance reform is about jobs. This legislation alone will create 4 million jobs, about 400,000 jobs very soon."

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, at the 2010 Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties, March 9, 2010 <http://pelosi.house.gov/news/press-releases/2010/03/releases-March10-conf.shtml>

Here is a charitable report of interpretation of Speaker Pelosi’s remarks

"In the fall of the year," Pelosi said today, "the outside groups…were saying ‘it’s about abortion,’ which it never was. ‘It’s about ‘death panels,” which it never was. ‘It’s about a job-killer,’ which it creates four million. ‘It’s about increasing the deficit’; well, the main reason to pass it was to decrease the deficit." Her contention was that the Senate "didn’t have a bill." And until the Senate produced an actual piece of legislation that could be matched up and debated against what was passed by the House, no one truly knew what would be voted on. "They were still trying to woo the Republicans," Pelosi said of the Senate leadership and the White House, trying to "get that 60th vote that never was coming. That’s why [there was a] reconciliation [vote]" that required only a simple majority.

"So, that’s why I was saying we have to pass a bill so we can see so that we can show you what it is and what it isn’t," Pelosi continued. "It is none of these things. It’s not going to be any of these things." She recognized that her comment was "a good statement to take out of context." But the minority leader added, "But the fact is, until you have a bill, you can’t really, we can’t really debunk what they’re saying…."

Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post, 6/20/12, "Pelosi Defends her Infamous Health Care Remark",<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/pelosi-defends-her-infamous-health-care-remark/2012/06/20/gJQAqch6qV_blog.html>

Being a "good government type" (derisively described by the party regulars as a Goo Goo) I would suggest [It has been suggested before by others] to Speaker Pelosi and others of her ilk on both sides of the aisle that there be a public review period for each bill "… so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."

One suggestion I like for a review period is to have a day of review for each 20 pages (I define a page as 250 words) of a bill. The Affordable Health Care Act has about 363,000 words

See <http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/11/08/facts-about-the-length-of-h-r-3962/>

and thus would require about a 73 day review period.

I would even recommend that the bill be in "final form" so that one would not have to bounce around the US Code to following the references.

I have always been an unrepentant Goo Goo. The party regulars’ tactic has always been to outwait the Goo Goos as they generally have to go back to their life and cannot remain long in the arena thus allowing the party regulars to continue unhindered as before.

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

The origin of the term “goo goo” for the Good Government clubs goes back a long way. It is discussed extensively in Boss Flynn’s “You’re the Boss”, still one of the best accounts of how machine politics works. (Flynn died in 1953 so our ridiculous copyright laws decree that the book, which is long out of print, won’t be public domain for ten more years, and I suspect that my copy has long vanished into the coffers of the book borrowers. ) Flynn’s point was that the goo goos come and go, but the machine is around for the long haul.

We seem to be building a national machine. The Democratic Party had such in the South from the time I was born until the Solid South went from solidly Democrat to somewhat reliably Republican. Oddly enough the Negro vote, which would have been solidly Republican (the GOP freed the slaves) had it existed in the early part of the 20^th Century was won over by Roosevelt to be Democrat.

Of course Madison knew precisely what he was talking about: make the law so complex that no one can understand it or even know it, and you have effectively finished off the republic. This is one reason why the words of Dick the Butcher in Shakespeare’s Henry VI is so popular: “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Of course Dick the Butcher is a revolutionary and wants to bring chaos. On the other hand, at one time at least the Constitution of the Republic of Andorra (a small county sized micro-nation nestles in the Pyrenees between France and Spain which supports itself on smuggling and tourism had these words. “Those black robed ones whose profession is to stir disputes are forever banned from this Republic on pain of instant death.” I think they may have changed that n the last decades. Probably at the instigation of the lawyers?

John Adams considered the lawyers the aristocrats of the republic. It was an aristocracy one could enter by hard work and intellectual merit.

re: "reading education"

Jerry,

Read and pondered all of the bits and pieces on the topic in the recent stuff, set me to looking back into my own past….

My world didn’t have this current debate over method/style to educate the little ones and I can’t speak as to the effectiveness of 50’s/60’s era "Dick and Jane" books that were the norm at the time, I pretty much disregarded them as trivial. What I do know and remember quite well was that, by the time I was 4 I knew:

a) What a dictionary was

b) How to use it

c) Where in my house the thing was located And I was so massively curious that I knew full-well that, if I was to understand something unfamiliar on a printed page, that my very best friend was that honkin’ big book chock full ‘o words that I had to climb up on a chair to fetch down with both hands…..

Perhaps some thought into something so basic as teaching kids dictionary use?

Craig

Rev. C.E. Aldinger

Subj: Failure analysis: Failed steam tubes were too-perfectly manufactured!

http://atomicinsights.com/2013/03/san-onofre-steam-generators-honest-error-driven-by-search-for-perfection.html

>>At just the wrong condition – 100% steam flow – a combination of relatively dry steam, precisely manufactured anti-vibration bars (AVB), and densely packed u-tubes resulted in a few hundred (out of nearly 10,000) tubes vibrating with a large enough amplitude to make contact. The unexpected vibration and contact resulted in accelerated wear and caused one tube to fail while the steam generator was operating.

…

Surprisingly enough, the reason that the condition does not exist in Unit 2 is that the anti-vibration bars (AVB) in Unit 2 were made with enough less precision that they prevented the perfect pitch situation.

Instead of being virtually perfectly round holes through which the steam generator tubes could penetrate with tight tolerance but no contact, the AVB’s in unit 2 had enough manufacturing variation that they made contact with the penetrating tubes with an average force that was twice as high as the minor, incidental contact achieved in Unit 3.

…

That extra contact force, which was considered to be undesirable by the designers at the time they designed and manufactured the tubes, provided enough unplanned disruption to the tube bundle that the harmonic vibration could not get started and could not reach enough of an amplitude to cause tube to tube wear (TTW).

It is instructive to learn that the tighter tolerances in unit 3 were purposely chosen because the supplier was seeking continuous process improvement. MHI engineers had determined that a small change in the manufacturing process could improve the repeatability of the AVB holes.

The design team agreed that the tighter tolerances resulted in a design that was “significantly more conservative than previous designs in addressing U-bend tube vibration and wear.” (page 48 of MHI’s root cause

analysis)

Because the computer models used for the design process were not perfect fidelity reproductions of the complete environment of the steam generator, simulation runs did not reveal the potentially detrimental effect of the tighter tolerances.<<

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Mail 705 Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Sad state of energy in Oregon

This is just sad to me. Living in a state with such abundant Hydro electric power and our utilities now are forced to pay for more expensive Wind energy "because it’s green."

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/12/regulators_tell_bonneville_to.html

The even sadder part is that they ignore the reasons why BPA was pulling the plug on the wind farms to begin with. I’d rather have Salmon in the waters then energy from windmills.

Erik

One reason for leaving most regulations to the states, not Washington.

U.N. Climate Court

Ah, now we get into the life tax and the New World Order with all the unelected technocrats — just like in Europe.

<.>

Bureaucrats at the UN Climate Summit in Durban have outlined plans for the most draconian, harebrained and madcap climate change treaty ever produced, under which the west would be mandated to respect “the rights of Mother Earth” by paying a “climate debt” which would act as a slush fund for bankrolling an all-powerful world government.

</>

http://www.infowars.com/un-calls-for-eco-fascist-world-government-at-durban-summit/

So, now some city even further away and more alienated from real life than Washington is going to tell us how much money we owe them to fund their political projects and idealistic quests?

At what point do we stop participating in this madness?

I want my country back.

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

I doubt that the Congress will have much to do with that. Even England is backing away from the EU bureaucrats. And certainly none of the Republican candidates would consider this more than a joke.

Click here: A Place to Stand: Prizes – In Other Areas – They Work To <http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2011/12/prizes-in-other-areas-they-work-to.html>

A blog article I have done on government and other use of prizes more generally than technologically. I hope it interests you.

My Regards

Neil Craig

"a lone wolf howling in despair in the intellectual wilderness of Scots politics"

You may be interested in my political blog http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/

I have been advocating prizes for a long time, and when my son was a Congressional staffer he did some memos on prizes for Mr. Gengrich at the Speaker’s request. Newt has long been in favor of prizes.

Subject: As California mandate looms, some LGBT curriculum already in place <http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/10/lgbt-curriculum-already-in-place-in-some-california-classrooms-as-state-mandate-looms/>

Jerry,

It seems the PC police are firmly in charge…it isn’t enough for people’s accomplishments to stand on their own, we have to call special attention to them because they are gay.

For me, force feeding to our kids just causes me to be angry, accomplishing the opposite of what they intended.

http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/10/lgbt-curriculum-already-in-place-in-some-california-classrooms-as-state-mandate-looms/?hpt=hp_c1

Tracy

You wrote about Radio Shack. Do they still have real Radio Shacks where you live? Up here they all look like strip mall kiosks or sub-compact shoppettes full of cell phones, related accessories, and a few useful objects here and there. When I was a child, going to radioshack was fun. They had stuff that was radioshack brand and it was decent. You could get metal detectors, walkie talkies, and anything you needed for electronic hobbies. You can’t get any of that now. Is this happening in your neck of the woods?

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Our local Radio Shack hasn’t changed for 20 years. It’s in the same location on Ventura Boulevard, and it apparently gets enough business that it stays open. Being that it’s walking distance I generally go there when I need something. I bought more stuff there before Fry’s opened in Burbank, and I got my Tandy computer there many years ago when they first came out. I remember the old Allied Radio Shack days just after WW II. This isn’t like that, but it’s still a fairly cool place.

INSS MacArthur

Dr. Pournelle;

It was inevitable — and gladly so — that some 3D modelling wizards out there would build images of the MacArthur [although they misidentify it as the Leif Ericson].

Here are the links:

http://www.projectrho.com/portfolio/port09.html

http://www.projectrho.com/portfolio/port10.html

http://www.projectrho.com/portfolio/port11.html

http://www.projectrho.com/portfolio/port18.html

http://www.projectrho.com/portfolio/port19.html

http://www.projectrho.com/portfolio/port20.html

The last one could be a Motie copy just before its destruction inside of Murcheson’s Eye.

Pete Nofel

My pictures of my model of INSS Macarthur are here http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosreports/macarthur.html

I liked the model enough that I came up with reasons for its shape and design. And see http://www.angelfire.com/trek/deangelisium/inssmac.html which is gorgeous. Thanks.

Who to admit, follow up

Hello Jerry,

I forgot to add, in the frantic race to save the world’s GLBT’s from

the stigma of being ridiculed, there was NO suggestion that Coptic

Christians in Egypt, or for that matter, Christians in general,

should be given preferential immigration status just because they

were, as Christians, being murdered in wholesale quantities by their

governments, friends, and neighbors.

Of course, given the all out war against Christianity being waged by

the US Government inside the US, we should be grateful that the State

Department isn’t ARMING the Egyptian Muslims who are murdering

the……….

Oh wait, never mind.

Bob Ludwick

several comments

Jerry:

Several comments on yesterday’s posts.

I spent two semesters as a visiting professor at the Marmara University School of Engineering in Istanbul. Every one of my Turkish faculty colleagues had received his/her PhD at a university in either Europe or the US. They were reaching the point where Turkey could begin to produce engineering PhDs domestically, with quality comparable to those from Europe or the US. The Dean of Engineering was later picked to head TUBITAK, the Turkish equivalent of the National Science Foundation. Her major contribution there was to break up the "old boy" network that kept younger researchers from getting grants. While she was still at Marmara, I had provided her with samples of the materials we used at my home base, University of Dayton Research Institute. She got a lot of bad press for upsetting a lot of rice bowls, but she had the backing of the government, and succeeded in opening up Turkish science. She recently retired. I don’t know if her reforms will be continued.

Regarding the effects of Federal funding on science, in my 1992 book SCIENCE FUNDING: POLITICS AND PORKBARREL, I examined the extent to which Federal money had corrupted the scientific enterprise in the US. I’m sure it has gotten worse since then, but I’ve retired from the grant-hustling game, and no longer keep track.

I was surprised but pleased to find that Herman Kahn’s books are still in print. With nuclear weapon proliferation continuing, Kahn’s thinking remains relevant. In my 1988 book A FIGHTING CHANCE: THE MORAL USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, I applied Just War Doctrine to the use of nuclear weapons for war-fighting, not just for deterrence. I’m afraid that, too, may become relevant again.

Joseph P. Martino

So am I, and there isn’t so much debate as there used to be. I find that STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY and my old USAF study of stability are in use in some graduate classes at major universities and war colleges, so at least there’s some discussion of these matters or importance.

This article makes a good point of the rise in government spending. It’s not gone down since 1954

With those numbers in mind, some cynics might assume that government spending has grown over the past 55 years just to keep pace with inflation. Others might point out that there are a lot more Americans for government to serve today than there were back in 1954.

But the truth is that adjusting for population growth and inflation doesn’t even begin to account for the explosion of government spending. Since 1965, the year the Beatles played Shea Stadium and the miniskirt came to America, government spending has grown faster than the combined total of inflation plus population growth every year but one.

If government spending in America had just held pace with population growth and inflation since 1954, government spending today would total $1.3 trillion. Instead, spending this year will top $5.4 trillion.

http://takimag.com/article/the_roots_of_voter_anger_go_back_to_1954

Dave Krecklow

GDP

In reference to Steve’s email….

GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports)….

Federal Expenditures = government spending So, Federal Expenditures per capita per GDP is …

Federal Expenditures/Capita/(private consumption + gross investment + Federal Expenditures + (exports − imports))

So, of course its close to constant! You’ve just eliminated something that makes up a huge percentage. The news media likes to talk about GDP, but we really need a new metric. GDP assumes that government spending has no negative impacts on the private sector. It also means that if I am Obama and want to pump up GDP artificially, I can borrow a bunch of money from China, spend it here, and tell everyone GDP looks better…

Has Larry Niven found the new term to describe the President, "Lead from Behind" to be amusing? I laughed when I heard it, because I really do think our current administration is filled with controlling bullies and cowards….

Love your work!

Best,

Brendan

"The relevant statistic is not raw dollars spent, but instead is Federal Expenditures per capita per GDP"

political sleight of hand – counting population growth twice since population growth affects GDP.

By this formula he is admitting the Federal proportion has grown with the square of population growth and such trends are clearly unsustainable.

The formula he should be using is

Federal Expenditure per capita per GDP PER CAPITA

or simplifying Federal expenditure as a proportion of GDP

—————————-

"Hansen’s Bulldog", according to the Register article, says that warming has been "between 0.014C and 0.018C a year" which (A) looks to be well inside any margin of error and (B) not remotely catastrophic or even outside historical experience. And this is the worst "Bulldog" can claim.

Neil Craig

Government attempts at micromanagement create perverse incentives as universities game the system.

"Students whose A-level grades fall just short of AAB next year could be at risk of missing out on a university place altogether, a number of institutions have warned." <http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=418369&c=1>

"A pre-1992 university has cut almost £1 million in planned cash support for poorer students while offering tuition-fee discounts for high-achieving applicants so that it can bid for extra places on two fronts." <http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=418367&c=1>

Cheating in the examination system: <http://preview.tinyurl.com/clyv6oh> <http://preview.tinyurl.com/7csm8el> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16076471> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16067541>

I’m beginning to have second thoughts about staying around to watch the train wreck.

—

Harry Erwin, PhD

"If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning." (Catherine Aird)

A school board member in Florida doesn’t know any of the answers to the 10th grade Florida math test. The test is helpfully included.

http://legalinsurrection.com/2011/12/sandbagging/

Oh dear.

A couple of the questions used notation I don’t know, and a friend noticed that question #2 is a bit ill-defined, but I fail to see how someone with a BS was unable to do any of the questions. The board member in question said that no one in his circle of friends has to do problems like this at work. Is the purpose of the math curriculum to teach people how to do specific problems they will have to do some day or teach them how to address and solve what questions may arise. Note that in many of the algebra story problems, the test actually sets up the equations for the test taker.

I must admit that I wasn’t expecting to see A Clockwork Orange and Apocalypse Now show up in a 10th grade math test.

Mike Johns