| Thursday,
January 23, 2003 Note that there is a
column by Lomborg in today's Wall Street Journal.
From: Stephen M. St. Onge saintonge@hotmail.com
Date: Jan. 23, 2003
subject: Environmental Science
Dear Jerry:
It's been rich, reading all the letters you've
posted from people who say, 'I haven't read The Skeptical
Environmentalist, but I know it's wrong.' In that sentence, the period
should proceed the word 'but.'
Meanwhile, next time someone tells you that you
can't trust certain opinions like Lomborg's because they're being
supported by people who stand to make money if they are accepted, refer
them to this story: http://www.reason.com/rb/rb011503.shtml
. It isn't just skeptical environmentalists who have a financial axe to
grind.
Best, Stephen
DELENDAM ESSE SAUDI ARABIA!
Lomborg has no larger axe than, say Ehrlich: they
both profit from their books. As an author I can hardly object...
Re: IQ numbers
around the world.
Both Dr Pournelle and Gregory Cochran find Griffe's
numbers look a bit low. I suspect that both of you are familiar with
scores normalized to the US norm. Griffe's numbers were apparently
normalized to an expected world norm. There are a LOT of Chinese people.
This seems to have shoved the peak two or three points away from where we
are used to seeing it.
My country showed on that chart as a 97. But I
expect that my government CALLS that point one hundred.
Greg Goss gossg@gossg.org
From: Stephen M. St. Onge saintonge@hotmail.com
Date: Jan. 23rd, 2003
subject: Beyond incompetence, definitely racist
Dear Jerry:
Check out these two brochures by the New Jersey
Education Association, trying to get parents to volunteer to help teachers
in the classroom. One is for "parents," the other is for
"African Americans." cached by Google at
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:
DiDSmzh-fV4C:www.njea.org/FamilyCircle
/default.asp+%22new+jersey+education+
association%22+%22for+parents%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8.
Apparently, the NJEA doesn't think blacks can understand them 'big words.'
Or maybe it just doesn't want them to understand
them.
Best, Stephen
DELENDAM ESSE SAUDI ARABIA!
Paternalism?
At LASFS ( http://www.lasfs.org
) meeting last week I got into a conversation with Francis Hamit, who has
published many articles on matters of security and foreign policy. He has
been involved in a big fight over electronic rights; I told him that I
didn't think the electronic rights to most of my journalism were worth
much; old columns and articles don't hang around and if they do aren't
very relevant. In a word, I thought Francis was legally correct but making
more of the matter than perhaps he should. The result was this pair of
letters, which are certainly informative:
Dear Jerry:
At the LASFS last night we were talking about
electronic copyright infringement. You asked how big the problem is. The
honest answer is that, so far, I really don't know. However, on mornings
like this, before I'm ready to do creative work, I do internet searches
looking for documents.
Since the Tasini decision in June of 2001 I've
personally registered the copyrights to over 300 of my magazine articles.
About a third of these are still being infringed and, as you know,
registration is an absolute prerequisite to any kind of legal action. The
threat of legal action is a prerequisite to even getting their attention,
much less any kind of settlement.
I started out looking at the obvious source for
infringement, the database providers like Lexis-Nexis, Factiva, Ingenta,
Northern Light and Dialog. Prices for individual articles range between
$2.95 and $22.00. Since everyone offers pretty much the same selection you
may wonder about the range here. It's based upon the "Principle of
Least Effort" theory. Once a researcher finds something, they won't
look further for a better price, especially if they are spending someone
else's money. They buy it and move on. There was a case a few years ago
where Texaco got dinged for buying one copy and then making and
distributing copies to about a hundred other employees. They tried a
"fair use" defense and were shot down. Had to pay pretty heavy
damages for infringement. Likewise a similar case against Disney for
making over 130 copies of a weekly newsletter they had only three
subscriptions to, was settled very quickly.
So the principle is established. One copy, one fee,
if you are a commercial enterprise. Dialog will sell you any number of
copies, but bill you for the base amount times the number of copies. They
service, by their own account, 20,000 major corporations. How big that
user base is really is hard to measure. The Ford Motor Company intranet
has 90,000 users but they are one of the largest.. If those 20,000
customers average only one thousand users each, that a potential market of
twenty million users. Of course that doesn't mean that anyone will sell
that many copies of one article, but if a boss wants to give his people a
heads-up on a particularly interesting piece, it is well within
possibility that you would sell one thousand copies at $4.30 each or
$4,300. Ironically, Dialog advertises one of the benefits of their service
is that they have secured all these rights and customers are protected
against copyright infringement claims. I know of at least a dozen
instances where that is not true.
Dialog is owned by Thomson Learning, part of Thomson
Corporation, which is , I think, the world's largest provider of online
information. Thomson also owns Gale Group which provides both print and
online product to libraries of all kinds. Thomson sold their mature
businesses like newspapers and travel agencies to invest more in the
online business. Last year Thomson had revenues of 7.2 billion dollars and
Thomson Learning, which includes both Gale Group and Dialog, was 1.8
billion dollars of that. Online was 31% of that, or about half a billion
dollars. Eighty percent of those revenues came from the United States and
Canada. (One of my assets as a reporter is the fact that I took graduate
level courses in Accounting and Finance). Gale Group projects that, by
2005, eighty percent of its revenue will come from online services. Since
I don't think they will discontinue any of their print product, that will
give you an idea of where all this is going. Its a global market which is
growing exponentially.
Gale Group, ProQuest and EBSCO between them, pretty
much own the library electronic information market. Now, as I said, my
local library up here in Kern County pays about $8,000 a year for the Gale
Group databases it subscribes to. Patrons can access these online and can
download, print out or e-mail any of the articles quite easily.
There has been a lot of disinformation about the
small size of the market. The fact is that officials of both Gale Group
and ProQuest have described the revenue model for this industry at
conferences and this has been reported in trade magazines like
"Library Journal". They can and do track article usage to the
individual level and report usage to their library customers to the
individual publication level. (if you think about it, this is no more
difficult than any other credit card transaction. Every article has a
separate tracking number.)
So even if the publishers are currently obtaining
"all rights' contracts with freelancers, that doesn't cure the
problem of the hundreds of thousands of articles which are already in the
system and for which no one secured electronic rights. Added to which
there is another problem that part of the DMCA that no one really talks
about, the "Copyright Management Information" provision in
Chapter 1202 which provides up to $25,000 in Statutory damages per
instance for misstating the ownership of a copyright. (Timely registration
is not a prerequisite here). In every case, the ownership is attributed to
the publisher not the author. That's a huge potential liability which has
been ignored until now. And then there is Article Six of the WIPO treaty
which is now active, which seems to make the very act of making something
available online without permission infringement, even if there is no
actual copying or distribution.
Like I said, unless there is a court order that
requires these companies to disclose the exact nature and number of
infringements, its going to be very hard to determine how much is being
infringed. Distribution of these articles is now so pervasive that the
value of the copyrights in them has been effectively destroyed. There are
over 16,000 public and academic libraries in this nation alone and I've
identified about 40,000 worldwide where my articles are infringed. Given
that patron usage is both "fair use" and uncontrollable and that
libraries and archives have special protections in the Copyright Act,
there is not much that can be done there realistically. The only people
who can be sued are the original publishers, aggregators like Gale and
ProQuest and the commercial database firms, who are, after all, making
quite a bit of money out of this. Billions of dollars.
Technology makes it too easy and the law makes it
too hard to infringe. Whatever happens here, it won't be pretty. Feel free
to check this out for yourself and to use any of this information. These
days I'm mostly working on my book.
Sincerely,
Francis Hamit
During our conversation I wondered at the size of
the library market and budgets. He followed with:
Dear Jerry:
Well you did ask and I view internet research as a
form of meditation. So here goes:
According the American Library Association there are
9,074 public libraries in the U.S and 3,658 Academic Libraries. There are
93,861 school libraries but not many of this are online yet.
Now, according the the National Center for Education
Statistics July 2002 report entitled "Public Libraries in the UNited
States, Fiscal Year 2000" (Referring only to the first category, the
total operating income was 7>7 billion dollars. The average per capita
operating income was over $28 million.
95 percent of these libraries had some form of
internet access with 99, 453 terminals available in the libraries
themselves plus whatever dial-in is provided for patrons. Over 85 percent
of these libraries provided access to "electronic services". I
think that means databases.
Now extrapolating the $8,000 paid for one database
by the Kern County Library (and some libraries have as many as ten
databases) by the 7,730 libraries in this category we arrive at a very
rough guess figure of $61,840,000, but that's old data and the market is
said the be growing at 20% per year. And that is just the U.S.A. and not
the other 100 or so nations where these services are sold. Heck, it
doesn't even include the government, military, special or other school
libraries.
Use this as you will.
Regards, Francis Hamit
BTW, that report is a 144 page PDF file which can be
downloaded easily from the ALA site.
All of which is worth thinking about. Thanks! Discussion
continues below.
And lots of news from Dan Spisak:
Jerry,
Just when I thought I wouldn't find something cool
to do with computer technology comes along this article in New Scientist.
Apparently there is a group using a modified ink jet printer to print
complex bio-materials and there is a possibility it could lead to being
able to print skin, organs and the like. Fascinating stuff:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/
news.jsp?id=ns99993292
Also, Wired has some interesting
commentary/speculation on the seemingly inevitable collapse/revolution of
the music industry as we all know it:
http://www.wired.com/wired/
archive/11.02/dirge.html
A cautionary tale of why sometimes its not a good
idea to push the absolute limits of your CPU, extreme overclocking can
result in permanent damage to you CPU, just not in the ways you expected:
http://www.hardocp.com/
article.html?art=NDE5
Amazon International (whomever they are) has
preliminary SPEC ViewPerf 7 benchmarks from the new NVIDIA QuadroFX 2000.
By the numbers this card looks to seriously compete with the ATI FireGL X1
card, and NVIDIA totally destroys its previous Quadro card in this
benchmark. This is about to become an interesting two horse race once
again:
http://www.amazoninternational.com
/html/news/news_current.asp
-Dan S.
Subject: Arbeit macht frei.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story2&cid=524&u=/ap/20030123/
ap_wo_en_po/eu_gen_denmark_scouts_2&printer=1
Roland Dobbins
Ugh. What's with Denmark?
Robert and Ginny did not
encourage their friends to talk about their private lives, and it is
difficult for me to sort out what is public and what is not. It's also
rather painful. Here is a good letter about them:
[Mrs.] Virginia Heinlein - A 2003 Remembrance
She was the wife and partner of the writer who most
influenced my life.
She passed away on Saturday morning and I just found
out this Tuesday night.
I met her in the late 70s, though she would not
recall that meeting. I was one of many people in line seeking an autograph
from her famous husband at a gathering of Libertarians in Phoenix,
Arizona. It was the only time I met her in person.
I was there as the guest of another author, Thea
Alexander, who wrote a book called 2150 A.D. She took me along as a kind
of executive assistant, but it was really just to give me the opportunity
to see the man I had admired for so long.
It is almost impossible, you see, to talk about
Virginia Heinlein without talking about her husband.
Virginia Doris Gerstenfeld Heinlein married Robert
Anson Heinlein in 1948 after his divorce from his first wife. They lived
for a while in Colorado. I know that because I became friends with their
back-then next door neighbors, the late G. Harry Stine, and his wife
Barbara Stine.
I began corresponding with Virginia Heinlein in the
summer of 1987 and had my last letter from her in 1996, when her eyesight
became so poor that correspondence became a chore.
Naturally, that means I began writing to the
Heinleins just eleven months before Mr. Heinlein passed away. As a result,
I corresponded with Mrs. Heinlein through the period just before and after
his death - a difficult time. (We were on a first name basis, but it
hardly seems appropriate here).
The content of those letters is, of course,
personal, and, as Mrs. Heinlein once said, people forget that a letter is
the property of the writer of the letter. It would not be proper to quote
from personal correspondence. Most of the Heinlein's correspondence was
sealed for a time after his death.
But I can say that the letters to me were politely
informal and that I feel fortunate in having had a chance to get to know
the Heinleins as many fans did not.
I cannot claim to have known them as a close friend
who saw them often, but the correspondence was a genuine privilege.
And there were wonderful bits and pieces in Mrs.
Heinlein's letters.
I learned, for example, about Grumbles From the
Grave right after Mrs. Heinlein requested Robert's letters from the
archivist. I like to think that my urging was part of her motivation in
going to work on it, but I know that I was not the only one to ask her to
tell us more. Of course, I believe Mr. Heinlein had planned Grumbles as a
nest egg project for her.
She was kind enough to send me computer print-outs
of her "trip reports" which later came out as the non-fiction
book, Tramp Royale.
Eventually, she moved to a retirement community in
Florida, though she remained very active.
Her passing is another milestone to me, the end of
an era.
It has been a little over six years since the
correspondence stopped, but Virginia Heinlein has never been off my mind
entirely. She encouraged me in my own writing. I got to send her a copy of
my first published novel - and one of the cover blurbs compared my work to
Robert Heinlein's.
But now I will not hear from her again in this life.
And the world will be less rich without her in it. She was a gracious and
kind lady, a remarkable and accomplished woman, and a pleasure to
"talk" with. I have missed her letters.
It is my most sincere wish that she is walking the
Glory Road with Robert Heinlein once again.
Adam Niswander Phoenix, AZ --
A few points. I added the [Mrs.] because Ginny
insisted on it. Robert had been married twice before, once in the
Annapolis Chapel. Little to nothing is known about his first marriage. I
happen to know the USNA classmate who was best man at that wedding.
The Heinlein Journal (http://members.aol.com/_ht
_a/bpral22169/myhomepage/), which had the cooperation of Ginny
Heinlein, had a long article about Leslyn, Robert's second wife whom he
divorced after World War II. Ginny always insisted that it be known that
she was not the cause of the divorce, nor did she date Robert until after
the divorce.
Theirs was a complete partnership, and Robert
rather proudly displayed mementos of Ginny which he had in prominent
places in his office. They were the first things you would notice when he
conducted you in there, and they remained after he moved from Colorado
Springs to Carmel, and after he converted from an IBM Executive Typewriter
to computers.
My parents live across the street from Mrs.
Heinlein's house. Interesting note: you knew about her death before the
larger community of Fleet Landing did.
I was fairly sure that she didn't need people
barging into her life, so my greetings to her consisted of an occasional
wave; I never formally met her.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying, I wonder
if today's female pilots and astronauts know that their pedigree goes back
through Podkayne and Hazel Stone to Virginia Heinlein. In much the same
way that JOs are often given an unofficial intro to Low Intensity Conflict
(Lord, I love that term) by John Christian and Skilly.
Lux aeterna dona, Domine....
Rod McFadden
You missed a pleasant experience by not meeting
her.
I first met them in 1960, when I was in
aerospace; Robert came to several technical conferences where I was
presenting papers, and I often saw them in Colorado Springs when they
lived there (at 1776 Mesa Ave. Broadmoor, Colorado Springs). It wasn't
generally known -- indeed Robert swore me to secrecy -- that there was a
rather elaborate system for converting the living room at 1776 into a
guest suite. I found that out one night when we were snowed in and I
couldn't get to my room at the Broadmoor Hotel. There's a long story that
goes with that night, and one day I will tell it; Robert always told
people that story when I was around, and insisted that it proved that
Ginny was a far better engineer than he was. (Or than I was, for that
matter.)
After they moved to Bonny Doon Road, Bonny
Doon (near Santa Cruz, California) we stayed with them several times: they
were famously good hosts, and enjoyed being sure there was nothing you
might conceivably want that they hadn't already put in the guest suite.
That all stopped when they moved to the smaller place in Carmel, of
course. Robert died there.
I never visited her in Florida, but I gather that
she fit in nicely: she always liked Navy people, and I think a little
regretted that she hadn't stayed in after World War II. She was a chemical
engineer and while the Navy wasn't promoting women to Admiral in those
days, who knows? Instead she married Robert, and in their first year they
lived in a trailer so small that she had to lie down so that he could
pace, which he did while writing. They always expected children, but they
had none.
After Robert died she wouldn't leave their house
in Carmel, not even to go to the Post Office, having all her groceries
delivered, for months, until friends drove up and literally forced her to
go out to dinner and meet some people at a Tor House (Robinson Jeffers)
party; then she got right back into her more usual mode, and was
reasonably active in the Navy retirement community in Jacksonville. She
spent the last part of her life fighting intellectual property pirates.
Rather effectively, too.
If there's any justice in this universe, they are
together again.
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