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View 466 May 14 - 20, 2007

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Monday, May 14, 2007

WinHEC opens in Los Angeles tomorrow AM, with registration and a reception tonight. I'm headed down there in a couple of hours.

This week will be HECTIC. Next Sunday I am off to Washington DC for a Homeland Security Conference (it's a long story as to why they would want me to participate in something of that sort) and then to be GOH with Larry Niven at Balticon (http://www.balticon.org/) and then back to DC for several days with my editor.

Meanwhile we are about 3,000 words from the end of Inferno 2. Since this book is both an Odyssey and a novel, it requires both the tourist observations of the former and character growth to a dramatic climax. It also requires resolution of some philosophical and religious concepts; as Niven put it, "this is an ambitious work." It's working, it's very good, but the last scenes require careful writing, and WinHEC and this trip could not have come at a worse time.

In other words, things are hectic here, and I probably won't be doing to a lot to keep this place up. I do have a good mailbag at Chaos Manor Reviews, and what I think is a good essay on the new Microsoft patent strategies will be up tomorrow.

I'm dancing as fast as I can. Thanks to those who have recently subscribed; this gives me one less thing to worry about. My problem just now is largely one of time and mental energy.

= = = =

I can't help noting that Art Bell, who can usually be relied on to have a contrarian view, has drunk the Man-caused Global Warming Kool-Aid. Last night he had on the author of the UN "scientific" report, and allowed him to say whatever he wanted. Deferential was our Art. Not a hard question in the lot, and the whole show functioned as a transmission belt for the Party Line. The more scientific evidence for doubting the Global Warming Terrorist hypothesis piles up, the less questioning there is, even in places where you expect someone to question authority and doubt orthodox science.

Note that anything that restricts US productivity is very good for a number of countries that have absolutely no intention of restricting anything. I also noted that Art Bell's guest had little enthusiasm for actual alternative energy sources such as nuclear power and solar power satellites. Of course I was hardly astonished.

=========

I note that the Internet seems crisp and fast this morning: that is both high throughput and low lag.

==========

 

 

 

 

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Tuesday, May 14, 2007   

  I will be at WinHEC all day. There may or may not be posts from WinHEC.

If you want something worth reading go to http://www.thespacereview.com/article/868/1

Less worthwhile but perhaps amusing is

Tennessee teachers stage fake gunman attack

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables. ....

Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action, but said the situation "involved poor judgment."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18645623/ 

One wonders what would be Principal Catherine Stephens' decision about whether a student would face disciplinary action for a similar stunt, and whether she would require any reflection whatever before reaching it.

Wade

Now we know why there is such opposition to arming students. They might have teachers like this.

When I was a lad in rural Tennessee some of us brought shotguns to school, in hopes of getting a shot at something to eat when walking home. The guns were of course carried with the breach open, and left in the cloakroom, where they wouldn't be easy to reach, but it wouldn't be impossible. On the other hand none of our teachers were really really stupid.

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Wednesday, May 15, 2007

It's afternoon. I was supposed to go to WinHEC this morning at dawn, but I didn't. Instead I slept in, hiked with Niven, plotted Inferno to the end, and I am about to go upstairs and write my part. There is another part that is Niven's thuktun.

Does anyone know anything about this blog spot http://thuktun.blogspot.com/ ? I was going to leave a message there but I have to go through hoops I don't care to -- I do not think I have a google account nor do I want one, among other things -- and there is no email address for the blog author. Apparently it has been going for a while. I found it by googling thuktun to be sure I had spelled the name right, and discovered that here is someone who claims to be the God of the Fithp. But I can't comment.

==============

I am now about to go write. For reasons not clear to me, Outlook is now failing to go get mail unless I tell it to, meaning that I find hundreds of spam items to download when I come sit here. My settings have no, of course, been changed, and it is supposed to get mail every ten minutes.

When I get all these projects done I am going to have to seriously look at alternatives to Windows and Office. So long as they were Good Enough it was fine, but lately they are less reliable.

DOES ANYONE have Outlook 2007 Working on Vista? I presume many do, but I have yet to do so. It may have to do with security certificates. All I know is that Outlook on Vista simply refuses to believe I am connected to the internet. I can PING my ISP provider; but Outlook can't find it so it is clearly some kind of security thing. I thought I had turned off every blasted firewall and security device I can find, but it still doesn't work. I certainly can't recommend Vista for anyone who wants to get work done.

=================


http://www.fpri.org/footnotes/
127.200703.mcdougall.warmilitaryushistory.html
 

 

 

 

 

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Thursday,  May 17, 2007

I am pleased to announce that ANOTHER STEP FARTHER OUT, a non-fiction book made up of columns and comments on science and the sciences, is now available in the subscriber area of Chaos Manor Reviews. This is not precisely the sequel to my original A STEP FARTHER OUT, but it is similar. A Step Farther Out was in print for more than twenty years. It was largely drawn from my columns in Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine written in the 1970's and 1980's. In those times science was mostly opposed by advocates of "appropriate technology". In addition, college campuses were plagued with faculty who predicted doom and gloom, massive starvation before 1995, collapse of the world economy, and so forth.

A Step Farther Out proclaimed that we were not doomed; that mankind could not merely survive, but survive with style; indeed one of my most popular lectures was entitled "Survival with Style."

Another Step Farther Out continues what the first book began. I am pleased to make it available to subscribers to this web site. The book is in pdf format. 

Other works in the subscriber area include the California 6th Grade Reader from 1912 or so, with many classic stories and poems that were once the heritage of all children in the California public schools, back when California public schools set the highest standard for the world. That too is available for download.

From time to time I will be adding other works to the subscriber area. The original A Step Farther Out is currently in preparation. I have posted excerpts from fiction works in progress, and that will continue.

==============

Yesterday I skipped the rest of WinHEC and worked on INFERNO 2. I produced the first draft of the rest of my part of the book; that is, there is another chapter which Niven and I have discussed, and we will both work on it, but doing the first draft of that is Niven's thuktun. He should have it done shortly. We should turn in a final draft in before July 1.

I will now turn to finishing Mamelukes.

Meanwhile, we have an arduous trip schedule ahead of us. I will try to keep up with both the column, this journal, and the two mail sections, but realistically I won't have as much time as I usually have.  I'll still be around, but I do have to take part in the conference, be GOH at Balticon, and pitch a new book to my editor.

==========

Bacevich's son killed in Iraq. 

War Critic's Soldier Son Killed in Iraq

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6639453,00.html
 

Eternal rest grant him, O Lord. And let light perpetual shine upon him. Colonel Bacevich has both my sympathy and my regards.

==========

Prince Harry

Jerry,

The politicians here in the UK have decided that it would be too dangerous for Prince Harry to serve in Iraq. Which is against his express wishes. In the Falklands campaign Prince Andrew, a Fleet Air Arm helicopter pilot, had among other duties, flying as a decoy to attract incoming Exocet missiles away from the fleet. Sitting in a helicopter waving a damn great radar reflector at a radar guided missile capable of sinking a warship is not the safest of duties. Keeping Prince Harry at home while his men go to war is a terrible precedent and breaks a thousand years of the tradition that when a British leader declared war he put his own life at hazard. As it is the poor man will never really be able to hold his head up again in the presence of those who did fight.

In my army the soldiers quickly formed a judgment that their officers were either good blokes or idiots and nothing in between. Even if Prince Harry is placed in the latter category he would be our idiot and no bleedin' raghead is going to have a go at him without they answer to us first. Not the least of the misjudgments of the Blair administration. This might be one of those rare instances where the Sovereign and ultimate head of the military should issue an actual order and over-ride our elected leadership.

John Edwards

The troops take an oath of allegiance to the Sovereign, not to the government. It would indeed be a good thing for the Queen to do. I doubt it will happen. We have come to regard counting the views of the masses as a substitute for judgment and thought.

==============

Can nothing be done about Publisher's Billing Exchange, which keeps sending me bills for subscriptions to magazines I don't subscribe to, and which I believe I once sent money to for a subscription to a magazine I DO subscribe to, only they never paid the subscription?

Is this a pure scam? It seems close to mail fraud, which I thought was a Federal crime.

 

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FridayMay 18, 2007

   On Iraq: What Next?

Luttwak's essay at http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081384 is worth your attention. Luttwak tells how the Turks governed Iraq. The method is not likely to work for the US. His cold analysis of insurgency is very good. Of course all that was known before Wolfowitz and his masters put us into Iraq, but apparently wasn't known to those making the decisions.

We are now losing both troops and good will in an attempt to recover the three missing soldiers. Of course we are, and rightly so; but it is another tactic that will often be employed by the insurgents. The Israelis know all about that one -- and have never recovered their missing troopers either.

The goal for the insurgents is to capture some female US soldiers. It is only a question of time before they do so. What they hope for is to provoke the US into a mass response that can be labeled terrorism; it worked in Lebanon, where the IDF effectively ended the Cedar Revolution and alienated whatever good will and respect they had earned from the Lebanese defense forces. In Iraq the insurgents hope for the same results, thus uniting the Iraqi population in one overwhelming goal: get the Americans OUT. Depend upon it. They will go after a female American soldier, and at some point they will get one. If we are not right now planning on what to do when that happens, we should be. Rumsfeld never would have planned on any such thing, nor would Wolfowitz. I don't know if the present military commands are doing it.

The only winning tactic I can see is to abandon most of Iraq, seize the oil fields, pump a lot of oil, use the revenue to hire Middle Eastern auxiliaries, and dole out money to any willing to be our allies over there -- specifically the Kurds and those other parts and nationalities in Iraq that have cooperated. Use the auxiliaries, supported by the Legions when needed, to make massive incursions into any area that seems to be supported exportable terror; and very slowly rebuild Mesopotamia, province by province, into a federal structure. But allowing the Iraqi central government to dole out the oil revenue is insane; it requires a central government able to cooperate and that is impossible. Whatever faction of the Iraqi central government gains control will hog the money. Be sure of that.

We use the Iraqi oil revenue to pay for the occupation, and to finance massive intelligence operations. We use bribes freely to secure local cooperation. We hire auxiliaries responsible to an American proconsul. The proconsul does not have control of the Legions. He can only ask for their help. Never command them.

An American proconsul with the Iraqi oil revenue at his disposal would have some power to build a new federal Mesopotamia. He would also be subject to enormous temptations. And he would undoubtedly have corrupt minions. The point here is to keep the LEGIONS from being corrupted by all this. We can live with corrupt auxiliaries. We can live with corrupt regional puppet governments. We cannot live with corrupted Legions.

If anyone else has a winning strategy I would like to hear it.

And the final alternative is simply to get the hell out. I doubt we will either get out cleanly or follow the strategy I outlined. What we will do isn't clear.

=======================

I remind you that Another Step Farther Out is available in the subscriber area. An even better formatted pdf has been prepared by James Early; in the near future I will include the revisions incorporated into the file now posted but use his more elegant formatting, and place that in the subscriber area. Think of what's there as a good reading copy.

And I am working on more material to be added. One of the fiction excerpts in the subscriber area has recently been updated to include changes made in the past few weeks. There is other progress.

==============

We are preparing for our trip. We've arranged house sitters (an old friend) and other such security measures. Now I have to make up pill sets -- three sets per day -- to carry with me. I am certain that some of the pills I take do no more than make expensive urine. On the other hand I must be doing something right. When I was younger I thought of people my age as old. I don't feel old, and I sure manage to get a lot of work done.

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Mail is still on short shrift, but there's some very good mail this week.

 

 

 

 

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Sunday,  May 20, 2007

I am in Washington DC after travel all day. All is well. I will see what I can do about keeping this place up.

As to what we are doing here, Niven and I are involved in this:

http://www.ndia.org/Template.cfm?Section=
7680&Template=/ContentManagement/
ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=19553

It's midnight here and I have to be up at 0 dawn thirty.

 

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This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the monthly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 8,000 - 12,000 words, depending.  (Older columns here.) For more on what this page is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE. If you have never read the explanatory material on that page, please do so. If  you got here through a link that didn't take you to the front page of this site, click here for a better explanation of what we're trying to do here. This site is run on the "public radio" model; see below.

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