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Flooding the Heartland 2011-06-29-1

  By Jerry Pournelle | Jun 29, 2011 - 10:25 am | Updated: June 29, 2011 - 1:42 pm |
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View Week 681 June 29 2011-1

We will be out of Internet contact for the day and possibly until tomorrow.

I haven’t time to write an essay this morning, but I will have time for thought during the day, and I will be able to collect my mail this evening. Meanwhile, if you want something to think about, contemplate this:

 

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

 

I have no claim to great competence in flood management, nor do I have independent sources for the claims made in this, which looks at first glance like the kind of science fiction intended to ridicule politically correct bureaucracy that has no adult supervision. Every opinion has a political weight for framing policy, and the actual scientific merit of the idea is unimportant. So is the scientific competence of the source: what matters is not science but political power within the bureaucracy. Science fiction used to produce a lot of such stories. I would have thought this one of them were it not for the headlines and TV news of the floods.

The usual criticism levied at the Corps of Engineers is hubris: that no matter the competence, control of nature is inherently impossible, and trying it will just make things worse. We know better, of course. Life in my time is a lot better than it was when I was growing up, and almost all of that is due to technology. That doesn’t mean mistakes can’t be made. When I was a kid, polio was a real danger and we were afraid of it for my first twenty years. When I was born most Americans regarded smallpox as a mortal danger, or at least remembered times when everyone did. I grew up unafraid of smallpox at the cost of a rather crude form of vaccination – they smeared goo on your arm, or with girls sometimes on a buttock, and stabbed you with a small needle about twenty times. It was uncomfortable and for a few it was painful – but it worked, and we were no longer afraid of smallpox. When I went into the Army we got smallpox vaccinations again, just in case. I could give the same story about diphtheria and bunch of other dread diseases (remember the origin of the Iditarod race?)

We made mistakes in developing a national policy on vaccination, and we still make some: but few in America fear smallpox or polio or diphtheria. When I was young a long distance telephone call was done by appointment and it was a Big Deal to talk to someone in New York or California from Memphis. Now – well, now I am talking to all of you, instantly. That’s technology.

We no longer fear famine, in part because of agricultural technology, in part due to transportation technologies. Again not perfectly applied, often badly executed, sometimes with artificial primary hampers like the TSA, but transportation works. We can get across country quickly and cheaply, so cheaply that it’s easier to beg the money for a ticket than it is to hitchhike. That’s progress of a sort.

It isn’t technological arrogance to assume you can make real changes in environmental matters like floods. It is incompetence to assume you can do it while catering to every non-scientific whim and making all ideas equal. But that’s another essay.

But do recall Napoleon Bonaparte, who was no stranger to political intrigue, betrayal, and conspiracies: “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”

Clearly someone failed to see the obvious, and those who did were silenced or ignored. Or both.

Having contemplated all this, I now invite you to contemplate the financial wreck from Frank-Dodd, and point out that almost everyone who thinks about the financial regulatory environment with all the “reforms” and bureaus is quite certain that if we go on as we are going, there will be another financial disaster making the Great Recession look small. And what are we doing? Why we will tax corporate jets and oil companies, and otherwise raise the cost of energy to the consumer.

Our present system of government appears to be idealistic Incompetence tempered by greed.

The Experiment Continues 681 2011-06-28-2

  By Jerry Pournelle | Jun 28, 2011 - 5:07 pm | Updated: June 29, 2011 - 1:44 pm |
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View 681 Tuesday June 28, 2011 – 2

I continue to work with WordPress and the new system for View and Mail. I miss being able to look over the day’s work and add to it, and there are other changes to get used to.

Meanwhile, there’s to be a bit of a hiatus: tomorrow we’re off for a few days. I expect to be back in business tomorrow (Wednesday) night, but I’m not sure what web access I will have. This system is impossible if you’re not on line: there’s little in the way of local copies of work done, so to link to anything else requires going out to the web. All fine and good if you have uninterrupted high speed Internet. Impossible if you don’t. Not much in between.

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.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow. If that turns out to be nothing, I’ll use Thursday to remedy the situation. And I’ll get some Mail up this evening. Probably general packet and another of comments on the new system. One thing I have noticed is that I have not learned how to do internal linkages. I used to use those a lot. But I’m still learning here…

I am writing this in Word in “blog publish mode.” When I “publish” that makes use of CSS sheets. I have set the “normal” style here to Georgia but made no other changes. We can see what that does…

 

View Week 681 June 27 2011 – 3

  By Jerry Pournelle | Jun 27, 2011 - 6:25 pm | Updated: June 27, 2011 - 6:25 pm |
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View Week 681 June 27, 2011 – 3]

 

I set up a bunch of mail only to be told that it will not publish. The problem seems to be related to very long links, but I am not sure. I don’t understand cascading style sheets but then I don’t think Word and WordPress have full understanding either. I will continue to grind on this. Some of that mail may be lost, and I apologize, but I have put in the whole day on this, and I’m running out of energy. The good news is that I did have the energy and the interest to grind on this all day.

Of course one solution is to start with a new document and publish each one for each mail. That will cut down on the amount of mail I can publish because the mechanical work of putting it up takes time.

Mail is important and getting it right is important. I’ll keep working on it. Thanks for your patience.

One problem is that the only message I get is that “this cannot be published.” I will try to learn more about why that has happened. It only happened once so maybe I was just unlucky. In any event this will all work out, and I did get a bunch of mail up. We’ll continue…

 

 

Mail Week 681 June 27, 2011

  By Jerry Pournelle | Jun 27, 2011 - 5:00 pm | Updated: June 27, 2011 - 5:11 pm |
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Mail June 27, 2011 – 1

 

New design

 

I like the new design layout… but is there any chance you could continue using the old parch5.jpg background image – seems like it’s been around long enough to be a tradition.

Chuck

 

It can be done, but the consensus around here is that it comes out weird colors depending on what you are looking at it with. I always saw it as parchment, but many saw an odd pink, and it changed from time to time. I like the grey for readability, and it’s probably time to give that a try. JEP

 

 

= = = = = = = = = =

None of the suggested formats come anywhere close to the standards set by Chaos Manor and Mail for the last 15 years. DO NOT use any of them as an example when setting up your new formats. Please come as close as possible to what you have been doing since I have been subscribing to Chaos Manor.

 

Chuck Anderson

 

Thanks for the kind words. We are trying. I really am trying to come as close as possible to what we have been doing, in part because I sure don’t want to learn something new. I do reserve the right to try various things, but I promise to get rid of them when they are ugly, as some probably will be. It’s an adventure game…

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The old format worked just fine for me, but I’m sure that I’ll get used to the new one and it will be fine too.

 

An unidentified reader provided the following:

 

“Instead, just post reader mail as it comes in along with your own comment – each in a separate post. I would think this would be simpler for you, too, by eliminating the compilation step.”

 

Please don’t do that. I know that many blogs allow reader comments to appear instantly. It is not necessarily a desirable ‘feature’. I like the idea that letters from your readers, mine or anyone else’s, appear because YOU read them and you, personally (It is YOUR blog, after all.), thought that they were worth passing along. If you feel that my letters, any or all, or those of your other readers that you choose not to publish, for WHATEVER reason, are better suited to the ash bin of history than to your blog, fine.

 

After all, I think that is what attracts many to your site: your personal involvement.

 

Also his suggestion that you comment on ALL of your reader mail seems mighty liberal with your time. Who was it that starved to death answering reader mail? We don’t need you as another example.

 

Anyway, thanks for your efforts.

 

Bob Ludwick

 

The only way to comment here is to send me mail. I get far more mail than I can publish. Some is quite good enough for publication, but it is part of a flood on the same subject. Some is flattering but doesn’t show any new perspectives. Some just doesn’t strike me as appealing to the readers. I select what I think is interesting, and the result is that I think this is one of the most interesting mail sections on the Web. We have a wide variety of readers with great perception and often great expertise.

While I try to read all the reader mail, I am sometimes a long way behind on that. I do have other things I have to get done. I wish I could comment on all the mail I select, but I often can’t. We does the best we can…

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Site Redesign

 

Jerry,

 

As a longtime reader, I can get along with everything I saw on the new page, except that the new page puts Saturday below Sunday. Personally, I can’t stand “blog order” – we read from the top down, and chronological order should run from the top down, not from the bottom up.

 

If the new software is not capable of placing the entries in logical order, the next best thing would be to recreate the “Monday – Tuesday – Wednesday” etc. links that were at the top of the old page, so readers could click a link and read Saturday first, then return to the top and click to read Sunday, instead of having to scroll futilely about the page to read in chronological order.

 

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

 

Respectfully,

Tom Brendel

 

We’re looking at this but I am not sure what to do. The calendar over there on the right is live, and it will let you go to a particular day; that may be the best we can do. For the moment we’re going to stay with what we have, but that doesn’t me we can’t revise once we see just how this works. For the moment I’m trying to get used to using what I have. Thanks.

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re: contempt of cop

 

It may interest you and your readers to know that in IL it is a class 1 felony punishable by 4-15 years in prison and $25,000 to record a police officer in performance of his duties.

This is on par with rape.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/08/chicago-district-attorney-recording-bad-cops_n_872921.html

http://www.heartland.org/full/29892/In_Illinois_Its_a_Felony_to_Film_Police.html

R

 

There is a trend in this direction. After the Rodney King incident it will not happen in Los Angeles; and I would think that the 14th Amendment give Congress ample power to defend the rights of citizens to monitor and report the actions of the local police. That is, after all, what Civil Rights is all about. Interesting that Illinois thinks that is not needed.

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Solar Windows

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/25/BUHP1K2FGD.DTL&type=tech

 

San Mateo based company.

 

The product reduces the amount of direct sunlight entering windows and converts it to electricity instead.

 

This product won the GE ecoimagination challenge.

 

John Harlow, President BravePoint

 

That appears to make sense. There is no point in wasting solar energy just to do that: the question is whether it is economical to try to make use of it. Thanks. Intruiging.

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Space Solar Power

 

Hello Jerry,

 

“I do know that when we did the Boeing study one of the tests was transmission of power through atmosphere using Goldstone as the transmitter to a rectenna; the efficiency of the operation, that is, the ratio of usable power out of the rectenna to the input power at Goldstone was about 90%.”

Actually, the recent spate of YouTube videos on the subject say that the rectenna produced an output of around 82.5% of the INCIDENT RF energy.

 

The Goldstone transmitter for the Venus tests produced around 450 kilowatts of rf. The the input power from the grid that was required to produce the rf was not reported. The best klystrons available today produce around 700 kw at an efficiency of 44% (current state of the art). The ones available in 1975 were considerably less efficient. Even granting 40% efficiency, the Goldstone transmitter tests required at least 1.2 megawatts of power from the grid to produce the 30 kilowatts from the rectenna.

 

Some (maybe most) of the newer proposals do away with the thousands of huge klystrons in orbit and replace them with large numbers of lower power solid state modules driving elements of a phased array. Here is a paper listing several alternatives (interestingly, the paper proceeds as if the down link were buildable).:

 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/54333065/2/History-of-Wireless-Power-Transmission

 

It includes information on the Goldstone tests, by the way.

 

One of the tables in the paper lists rudimentary specs for the downlink antenna. The number of transmit modules range from 97 million (NASA/DOE with 185 w/module) to 3.5 billion (Old JAXA proposal, with 1 w/module). The NASA/DOE proposal with a downlink at 2.45 GHz, a 1 km transmit antenna, and a 1 km receive rectenna is not believable; the ‘cold equations’ of aperture vs beamwidth don’t allow it. A 1 km diameter transmit antenna @ 2.45 GHz WILL NOT produce a 1 km diameter beam at a distance of 22,500 miles.

 

All of this sort of begs the issue: Antennas are not infinitely scalable, any more than are telescopes. At least not buildable ones. It is a little like using the specs for Hubble (8′ diameter, resolution .05 arc seconds) as ‘proof of principle’ for a telescope with a diameter of 50 million feet so that we could resolve 1 mile surface features on planets orbiting Alpha Centauri. In theory, that would work; in practice, we aren’t building a 50 million ft diameter telescope any time soon. Neither are we building, stabilizing, and maintaining a geosynchronous phased array antenna a couple of kilometers in diameter with a billion (more or less) driven elements any time soon.

 

Bob Ludwick

 

Thank you. I haven’t looked at the data in decades. I can only say that a team of us, all experienced, with a span of expertise we thought more than adequate, concluded after a lot of hard work that SSPS was economical once the capital costs – considerable capital costs – were paid. General Graham had a similar experience with his team of High Frontier staff and volunteers. So did Lawrence Livermore. I think that conclusion is still viable. Space Solar power isn’t easy – that’s one thing we have learned about space and with a vengeance, nothing is easy – but not easy doesn’t have to mean physically or economically impossible. I do not believe the dream is dead.

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Benign incompetence or competent malevolence

 

Hello Jerry,

 

“One may draw any conclusion one likes.”

 

True, but the sign being waved by the SEIU half of the Obama/SEIU mutual admiration society, combined by the observed behavior of the Obamunist half over the last two and a half years, should surely influence one’s conclusion a bit, I would think.

 

I suppose that the conclusion would also depend upon whether one thinks that stamping out a capitalist representative republic and replacing it with a socialist/Marxist/communist/fascist tyranny is benign or malevolent. (I know, socialism/Marxism et al are not identical, but one or more of them would be appropriate descriptions of ALL of the Obamunist actions since they took command–literally–of our country.)

 

Bob Ludwick

 

One does not need to impute malice to the normal operations of the Iron Law.

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