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Mail 650 November 21 - 28, 2010

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Monday  November 22, 2010

Terrorism as an insurable risk.

Dear Jerry:

The recent announcement by the terrorists that they plan to use mail bombs and similar tasks to administer a "death of a thousand cuts" to the global economy should cause us to think anew.

 I spent over 20 years in the security industry as officer, executive, consultant and columnist and the problem was always that we were were the Rodney Dangerfield profession; we got no respect and, unlike the military and the police, had no corporate culture to sustain us. Since 9/11 that has changed and we have gone too fat the other way. The recent dust-up with the new TSA security procedures is proof of that. These measures are a result of the fear that someone will be found wanting if there is another 9/11. But terrorism is a hazard that has been part of life and warfare since the Civil War (if not earlier.) And it is an insurable risk. We can adjust our behavior and our financial planning to compensate for this threat.

Right now the terrorists are winning because we live in fear . If we accept, going in, that there is no perfect security and the cost of prevention has to reflect actual risk, then we can plan. Security is not theatre if it is done right.

Perfect aviation security is easy: you don't fly the planes. Beyond that, risk enters in. So we can dial back the TSA procedures, but people will have to accept the inevitable "I told you so" that officials will offer the next time we have a plane fall out of the sky or crash into a building. Reasonable security measures will prevent 99.9% of the attempts. We won't prevent everything. The best countermeasure right now seems to be the drones that demolish the terrorists' training camps. This is a cost-effective way to fight the threat.

Bottom line, it's time for people to "man-up" and accept that there is a risk to flying. Fear is not a good response. Fear serves the enemy.

Sincerely,

Francis Hamit

Agreed. There needs to be a rational discussion of all this. What we have is not working, and costs $7 billion a year.

==

ObamaGrope V

Obama is moving further left and more towards oppressive central government, just as many feared. The moderate Dems were expendable for Obama's socialist agenda, and what remains of his party is further left. One friend says:

"I have studied Soviet techniques for psychological conditioning. This is right out of the book. Those people being groped are being conditioned for something far worse. Now they are going to force you to be groped or be fined and imprisoned. This is right out of Soviet Russia and how they determined who would go to the gulag. What happened to the choice of simply getting out of line? This is dangerous, very dangerous. The only way people can get away from the influence of being conditioned, is know what conditioning is to begin with."

Obama has found the enemy, and it is us. There are no plans to back off from the TSA gropes. This is a signal that power is not "by the people and for the people," but instead resides in his Imperial Presidency and Czars.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/airport-security-crackdown-
tsa-warns-jail-11000-fines-for-non-compliance/ 

http://www.theblaze.com/stories
/security-causes-huge-inconvenience-for-
all-of-us-obama-admits-he-has-no-clue-
how-intrusive-tsa-searches-are/ 

<http://www.theblaze.com/stories
/tsa-pat-down-leaves-bladder-cancer-
patient-humiliated-crying-soaked-in-urine/>

<http://www.theblaze.com/stories/ap-tsa-has-met-the-enemy-and-it-is-us/>

 I've always thought TSA was a dumb idea: "Thousands Standing Around" -- Expensive, ineffective, and diversionary from any substantive measures to oppose Radical Islam. Foreign friends thought it ludicrous that a few hundred terrorists (and Political Correctness) were allowed to paralyze major nations and mire America in prolonged, expensive conventional wars.

This was dumb under Bush II. Under Obama, it's a totalitarian nightmare.

John

Well, I might not put it so strongly. Thanks for the pointers to the horror stories. They illustrate some of the consequences of bad policies.

===========

Letter from England

Watching the train-wreck:

 If you want it bad, you get it bad--research management <http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101117/full/468347a.html>

 NASA couldn't manage a whelk stall <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7322/full/468346b.html>

 The UK needs the best researchers more than they need the UK <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7322/full/468346a.html>

 UK colleges and universities were planning to survive the cuts by increasing the number of full-fee-paying foreign students. And now the shoe drops <http://tinyurl.com/3ybd35p>

 Remember when I was asking about the demand elasticity of UK higher education? Here's an analysis <http://tinyurl.com/37s3j6r>. Cum grano salis.

 Why I now have students do less written coursework. <http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/>

 The UK Government is proposing that general practitioners ration access to medicine care <http://tinyurl.com/28aut77> <http://tinyurl.com/23gs9r8>

 The UK Government is proposing to eliminate the education maintenance allowance that currently pays 16-18-year olds to stay in school. <http://tinyurl.com/27cq3cv>

 --

"The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is." (Tom Vogl)

Harry Erwin

 =============

Rock Throwing Numbers Wrong in Mail: Thursday Nov 18, 2010

I hate to rain on a good parade - but I fear that Mike Smith has exaggerated our ability to move mountains.

As limestone weighs about 2 tons (2000 kg) per cubic metre, his 4 million ton weight estimate for Ayer's Rock only allows it the dimensions of a 126 m cube.

I suggest that the visible bit of Ayer's Rock is closer to 4000 million tons - which somewhat dampens his projected elevations.

Still be fun though.

Best Regards
 Paul Hayward
Auckland, New Zealand

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Tuesday,  November 23, 2010

I am still energy sapped by something like flu. It doesn't feel like the walking pneumonia I had twenty years ago. It just makes it hard to concentrate. Anyway, I took the day off.

===========

 

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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

For those who might be interested. a little history on Thanksgiving.

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

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Jerry: When pencils are illegal, only criminals will have pencils!

http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/11/24/
1333256/Students-Banned-From-Bringing-
Pencils-To-School 

Chris C

 

 

 

 

 

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