| Thursday,
January 15, 2004
I have been looking for some web
resources that explain some experiments involving the Heisenberg Uncertainty
principle.
I recall an experiment where electrons were fired
through two tubes close together and an interference pattern was shown. The
interference pattern vanished when one tube was covered up.
The uncertainty principle was shown when the same
thing happened even when one electron was fired through the two tubes.
Do you have any ideas on where to read about this?
Brice Yokem
The best book on this was by Richard Feynman who
explains the experiment and also explains that no one can really explain it,
but you must live with the results. I believe the title of the book is QED;
doubtless a reader will come up with more exact information.
And see below
================
Thinking about some U.S. conservatives' zeal for
censorship, this just came to mind:
Except for their preference to use government power to
enforce speech control, it seems rather like the morality police of the
Islamic fundamentalists, who go around whipping women who dare appear in
public without a proper burka.
--jim (Jim Warren)
(Just think of the political cartoons! ;-)
This deserves a longer answer than I have time for.
While it is true that there are those who want to control what other people
see, most conservatives simply want to be left alone: they are content that
there be censorship in their own region. Let everyone else go to hell in his
own fashion.
I am not going to get into a long discussion of
this, but I believe that the principle of consent of the governed combined
with the principle of majority rule dictates that local areas have real
power: power to do things that people in other areas consider not merely
unwise, but dead wrong.
I am willing to grant Boston, or Studio City, the
right to ban my books. I am not willing to grant that right to the Federal
Government. I would of course argue against Studio City banning sales of my
books in the local BookStar, but I would give my neighbors that right. For
years Bernie's News in Studio City had a back room of "adult" magazines.
Bernie kept the kids out of there. I don't recall anyone being upset by the
existence of his back room. Now, after some court cases, on open racks
across the street from Carpenter School you may see, at about 3 feet off the
ground, headlines: INSIDE! Joy Spreads, Gives Head, Swallows! I am not
at all sure that this aids my quality of life or increases my freedom.
==========================
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,61889,00.html
A privately owned
Foxboro, Massachusetts
company called
Cyberkinetics claims to have developed and brain-computer interface
they call Braingate. They have applied to the FDA for trails on 5
quadriplegic patients. The interface should allow the patients at least
minimal control of a computer using only signals from the brain.
Sincerely,
Randy Storms
=Wow!
==============================
Phil Chapman on Space and the
Bush Initiative
(Phil Chapman, PhD. in astronautical sciences MIT,
former astronaut is an old and valued friend and member of the space council
I intermittently chair.)
Jerry:
While I agree with you that NASA will screw up Bush's
vision, we need to distinguish between the limitations of government
programs generally and the problems due to NASA's current incompetence.
I would like to see the role of government in all
human spaceflight reduced to funding generic technology and providing
incentives to the private sector, but it is not going to happen. There is a
long history of government-run expeditions for exploration and scientific
research, and I think we should be satisfied if we can limit the government
to that. The real problems arise when the government moves beyond the Lewis
and Clark phase and tries to run trucking companies (such as the shuttle),
to become building managers (as in the ISS).or to manage real estate (as on
the Moon).
The obvious but fundamental message we need to
publicize is that a government program is a drain on the Federal deficit,
whereas a private enterprise program represents desirable economic growth.
NASA lacks the crucial mechanism available to corporations, which is that
profits can be re-invested in expansion. Positive feedback is essential to
exponential increase. The NASA budget will always be determined by
log-rolling in Congress, so that sustained growth is simply impossible. If
however we can create ways for private individuals to live and work in
space, and for corporations to make profits there, we can look forward to
growth without limit. We need to move beyond the Lewis and Clark phase into
the Oklahoma Land Rush phase.
If NASA can recover some of the competence it showed
during Apollo, it could create a permanent base on the Moon by 2020 - but we
can be sure that it will be a pro forma effort, with maybe 6 or 8 astronauts
stationed there, demonstrating the feasibility of living on the Moon but not
doing much if anything of real value. The net result would be a further
delay of at least a couple of decades before we become at last a spacefaring
nation, with opportunities for anybody who wants to get off Earth. If NASA
mounted a manned Mars mission after the lunar base, it would be half a
century before we could begin to make any real progress toward establishing
an extraterrestrial economy and civilization.
Having said all that, there are some things the agency
can and should do. As one example, we need an unmanned mission forthwith to
find out whether there is indeed ice in the Aitken Basin at the lunar south
pole. LOX/LH2 from that source would radically change the whole architecture
of the transportation system needed to support a permanent lunar base.
Moreover, electrolysis of water is one of the best ways to store solar
energy during the lunar day for use during the 14-day lunar night (you need
about 200 kg of water to supply 1 kW for that period). NASA should undertake
such a mission immediately, before making decisions about how to go back to
the Moon.
Instead of condemning NASA altogether, we need to find
ways to carve off pieces of the proposed program where we can engage the
engines of free enterprise. For example, there is no chance that NASA (or
any government agency) can run an efficient ice mine on the Moon. The NASA
lunar program should provide a market for the product, but not control its
production.
Transportation for a permanent lunar base breaks down
into three phases: (1) getting people and cargo off Earth; (2) moving them
to the vicinity of the Moon; and (3) landing on the Moon. The vehicles
needed for these three phases are quite different, so the architecture is
likely to involve transfers from one vehicle to another at a space station
in LEO and at another space station near the Moon (e.g., at L1). I would
very much like to see as many of these legs as possible flown by a
privately-owned spaceline. We need two new vehicles for launch to LEO (for
people and heavy cargo). Can we use this program to get a private launch
service running? In the process, can we make launch cheap enough (<$500/lb)
so that the SPS becomes feasible? Can private enterprise develop a
deep-space vehicle (no landing capability) to ferry people and cargo between
the LEO and L1 stations? How about the lunar landing shuttle, operating
between L1 and the surface?
We urgently need two things: first, an input to the
Aldridge Commission to make sure that it recommends using the private sector
wherever possible; and, second, a feasibility study to lay out an
architecture based on private enterprise and to create nominal business
plans to demonstrate the profitable operations are possible while saving the
taxpayers' money.
Phil Chapman
I agree on all counts here, but I am not sure that
anyone is listening. As you have pointed out, NASA has spent enough since
Apollo to take us halfway to Alpha Centauri; but the money went to
employment stability for the standing army, not for accomplishing any goals.
============================
On the Iraqi Blogger "Riverbend"
Jerry, Riverbend has been seen as anti-american since
she started blogging. I don't remember her speaking of a programming job. I
would say that she is trying to spread FUD. I may be off base , but I don't
think so. I didn't realize that Byte was still in existence, it's good to
hear. Mike H. Spokane,WA
-- This is only a .signature, please ignore it.
================================
On Doing Business In Iraq
Subject: Building Infrastructure in Iraq
Dear Jerry,
My brother, Dan, is in Iraq working for an outfit that
is rebuilding the power grid. He sent this to me today, something that he
wrote to explain to his kids what he's doing in Iraq:
Sheikhs or, How to Do Business in Iraq
Many in Iraq have clamored for electricity, and
many others have worked to hinder its restoration. Insurgents? No, bandits.
There is a profitable black market trade in copper across the border in
Iran. The "Restore Iraqi Electricity" contract calls for rebuilding damaged
high tension power lines, with their attendant tower pylons. You've seen
these things all over the States, metal truss structures with huge
insulators and heavy cables draped from one tower to the next. In Iraq,
between Basra and Baghdad, there are 732 of them, running nearly 300 miles,
spaced every 500 meters. They carry four hundred thousand volt/amps of
current. A few had been damaged by neglect- rust and high winds- but almost
none were hurt by U.S. bombs or tanks. By the time reconstruction efforts
were fully under weigh, over 400 of them were down. At night, resourceful
Iraqis would climb a tower and tie a rope to the top. They would attach it
to a pickup truck, unbolt two of the tower legs ! from the concrete caissons
in the ground, and pull the tower down. Swarming over the downed cables, as
thick as a man's arm, they would cut them into four foot chunks, load up
their trucks, and haul them across the border, a mere 20 miles away. There
they are put into brick kilns to burn off the plastic insulation and melt
the copper, then cool it into solid blocks for sale. Five hundred meters of
cable can bring $300 to $500, a fine wage for a night's work in Iraq.
So what's the solution? The Army is too busy
fighting ex-Baathists, radical Islamists and foreign mercenaries to do more
than cursory patrols of the pylons. The private security firm hired to
provide protection for our construction managers came up with an ingenious
plan. Pay the sheikhs. The sheikhs are local clan and tribal leaders, whose
suzerainty covers a few square miles, and a few hundred family and village
people. They own cars. They wear decent clothes. They smile and shake hands
with visitors, scrupulous in their courtesy. And you had better not cross
them. They do like money, too. Each sheikh is tasked with guarding the
towers in his jurisdiction. His guards (2 per tower- one day shift, one
night) get paid $60 a month in wages (that's for 360 hours of work, for the
mathematically disinclined), plus a $50 per month food allowance. The sheikh
gets $100 per guard per month, and he gets a $500 bonus at the end of
construction for keeping the towers and cab! les undamaged. The guards are
provided with uniforms and AK-47s with 30 rounds of ammunition, free of
charge.
The sheikhs are very attentive to their rights
and sovereignty. Their guys may have been the very ones who went to the
NEIGHBORING sheikh's property to steal copper cables, but will defend with
bullets their own area. So let the sheikhs defend towers on their own land,
and pay them a bonus to keep them up for the duration. They are quite
dependable in this, and see no inconsistency in their roles. Stealing from
competing tribes is an ancient and honorable Middle-Eastern custom, dating
back to long before Muhammad. Loyalty to sheikh is higher than loyalty to
country. The cables will get strung without further plundering.
Hmmm, you say, 400 towers times 2 guards plus
sheikh's cut plus bonus works out to what in 3 months? $572,000. A drop in
the bucket compared with the overall cost of reconstruction. We can look at
it as an investment.
Now, who takes care of all this when the rich
American contractors leave the country? Why, the Iraqi Electricity Ministry,
of course. Oops, weren't those the same fellows who were caught bringing
down towers one night, along with some local police? Well, perhaps they just
had a few bad eggs. Hmmm again. Please do understand, fair reader, that our
government (NOT the contractors) provided 150 Nissan 4 wheel drive pickup
trucks to this same Ministry. In 3 week's time, all 150 had disappeared.
That's right, lost, stolen, "reallocated," whatever. Gone. That's over
$3,000,000 worth of rolling stock, gone for good. So maybe $572,000 doesn't
seem like such a bad deal after all. At least we get something for it. With
whom would YOU rather do business?
Regards,
Steve Erbach Neenah, WI
Why am I in no way astonished? Sheiks and clans:
the key to anything in Iraq.
=====================
ZICAM
I read your post about Zicam. Very Prophetic for such
an old post. Have you heard? Zicam is being sued for causing someone to lose
their sense of smell and taste. Others are about to. Word has it that a
professional chef had it happen to them. Apparently, it's the high dose of
ionized zinc that does it. Scientists and researchers have been using
ionized zinc for decades to induce loss of smell in animals. Uh oh! Sounds
like the makers of Zicam are in a bit of hot water. Also sounds like it is
not a homeopathic remedy after all. Here's your original post:
Sunday, January 7, 2000 Column is due. I am
plugging away.
A fascinating exchange: as a result of my
casual remark that Zicam, which may work, is labelled "homeopathic" although
it certainly is not -- see View 124 -- I received mail from one of the
investors in GUM. He signs himself an MD and says:
I am investor in Zicam through investing in Gum
Tech International (Nasdaq:GUMM). The homeopathy "issue" is discussed on
http://www.gumminvestors.com in the "Q&;A" section where it is stated
exactly how much zinc is in Zicam. People who shortsell GUMM stock have used
the "homepathy" argument to badmouth the company.
I pointed out that (1) the label says Zicam is
homeopathic, and (2) it most certainly is not, since the theory of
homeopathic medicine is that you administer a substance that will cause the
symptoms of your disease, but you do so in doses so dilute as to be
meaningless. There are many variants on this and on the amount of dilution,
but the essence, administer a drug that will produce the symptoms of the
disease, is present in all of them; it is the very heart of homeopathic
medicine (as opposed to "allopathic" medicine).
This produced more frantic mail including the
statement that "The FDA makes the designation as to what is labelled as
"homeopathic" and they do not care about the traditional definiton. It is
simply a labelling definition."
Now frankly I find that hard to believe. Under
what authority does the FDA require someone to label a product in a manner
utterly false in all ways? Whatever Zicam, which delivers small but finite
doses of zinc to the nasal passages, can be called, "homeopathic" is
certainly NOT a valid claim, since it doesn't attempt to produce the
symptoms of a cold, and doesn't have such extreme dilution as to make
chemical effects impossible Whether or not Zicam is effective, it ain't
homeopathic. So why is a product labelled homeopathic, then excoriated for
being homeopathic, so that its investors are concerned that people are
selling the stock short and spreading the rumor that it is homeopathic? Of
course right on the label it SAYS it is homeopathic, which makes it just a
little harder to deny. Or does it?
Or is this an attempt to get the people who
believe in homeopathic medicine to buy it? There are apparently a sizable
number of people to whom "homeopathic" is not a pejorative term (and in some
drug stores and many health food stores there is a fairly sizable section of
homeopathic remedies -- some of which, if you read he labels, are horrifying
until you realize just how incredibly dilute this stuff usually is). I don't
know what is going on here, and I don't really care, but it is odd.
Incidentally, Dr. --- asked that his correspondence not be made public
"after examining my web site" making me wonder what the daylight got him
over here reading what I had said and sending me email without thinking that
might get his letters published. I mean, I couldn't make it more clear. But
I have withheld most of it and his name.
I don't see what is happening. Is there some
deep game of stock manipulation going on? My wife thinks the Zicam helped. I
don't, but I don't think it did any harm either, anmd how can you tell? It's
not cheap, and I am not sure I will try the experiment again, but I might,
depending on how I feel the next time I think I am coming down with a cold.
After all, my last one hung on so long I missed some conventions, missed
writing assignments, and was contemplating snake oil when it abruptly went
away..
Happened to see Zicam for sale in Long's this
morning while looking for something else. It still says "homeopathic" and it
still cannot be that whatever else is is or is not. Homeopathic remedies by
definition are dilute doses of stuff that will cause the symptoms of the
disease it is supposed to cure. This don't do that.
====================
A Visual Thesaurus
Subject: Visual Thesaurus
Dear Jerry,
For word lovers and those who appreciate well-done
Java programs:
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/online/index.html
Search for a word, then drag your mouse in the popup
window. Hover the mouse over one of the dots. Click on a synonym. Very nice
way to browse words.
Regards,
Steve Erbach Neenah, WI
Neat! I have put it into my bookmarks.
=============================
Dear Jerry; Re: James M. Reynolds' e-mail today.
Needless to say, I never said that it was luddite to suggest that NASA could
not handle the job of returning to the Moon. I simply did not address that
particular issue. The luddites to whom I referred would oppose public
funding for this venture regardless of how it was managed. Few, if any,
based their arguments on doubts about NASA's ability to do it, though some
generalized this to "government." It seems to me, in fact, that space
bashers often have a perverse faith in NASA's competence; for example when
they envision NASA strip-mining whole planets down to the core or turning
asteroids into country clubs. As Simon Woodworth so ably pointed out in his
e-mail, the space-basher argument normally hinges on the fallacy of a false
dilemna: EITHER we feed the starving people of wherever, OR we go to the
Moon.
In fact, I largely agree with James M.'s assessment:
NASA either can't do it or they will take so long and spend so much that the
program becomes a liability. A while back, someone posted an editorial
complaining that "Americans spend more on pizza than on space" (actually
that pizza sales exceed the NASA budget, not the same thing at all). One wag
responded, "That's because if you give a pizza company twenty dollars, you
get pizza. If you give NASA twenty billion dollars, you get nothing."
I also agree with some of your alternate suggestions
for a government program. We both know, however, that luddites and
space-bashers would go absolutely ape-shit at the very idea of military
management. Too bad, because this kind of development involves serious
national security considerations. The real objective, as you point out, is
to improve our technology and orbital capability. Today, we dominate space
in the sense of military utility but that dominance often rests on
technologies that stoop with the burden of age, especially in launch
systems.
I like the idea of a publicly funded "Super X-Prize,"
but getting pork-obsessed Congress-critters to go along with it would be an
enormous challenge. I don't think it's impossible that they might be
persuaded, however. If the privateers fall flat on their faces, the prize
will go unpaid and we can go ahead with a conventional government program.
One of the many complications would be finding ways to keep government
bureaucrats and turf-warriors from discreetly sabotaging efforts to claim
the prize.
If the prize fails, we haven't lost anything but time.
At our age, that is an important consideration, but it may well be worth the
risk. The Moon-prize would create a gold rush atmosphere in development and
provide the kind of efficiency, daring, and innovation that have been so
sorely lacking in NASA's efforts. I can see the Barbara Mikulskis of the
world responding to such a prize, "pirates *spit* mercenaries,*gasp*
free-for-all, *sputter* no oversight, bwah bwah!" Wouldn't it be wonderful.
Thanks again, Jimmy Reynolds
===================================
On the Mac and object
destruction (see view)
Subject: Dissappearing icons from dock mac Buffy
willow
If you remove a document from the the dock and it
blows away in a puff of smoke it was a shortcut or a bookmark. Not the
document itself. The OsX demons have hidden it in the douments folder, but
which documents folder???
Tom Weaver
As I suspected.
Jerry,
Take the advice I have given before: Buy David Pogue's
Book "Mac OSX: The Missing Manual" (be sure to get the Panther edition) and
read it. This comment
"And I will show you terror in a handful of dust.
After reading this I am afraid to do any serious work on the Mac. Surely
this doesn't really happen?"
Shows that you haven't really learned much about the
Mac, or how OS X works.
Bruce Tognazzini (good odds that I spelled that wrong)
just doesn't like the way the dock works. What he is referring to is that
when you drag a document icon onto the dock, the dock creats an icon that is
an alias/pointer/link to the original document. When you drag that icon
(remember it is only a pointer) off the dock, the pointer/icon "vanishes in
a puff of smoke". Right. It's a pointer, not the original. Bruce considers
this a mortal sin in interface design. I don't think it is such a big deal;
learn it once then get on with life. I've seen much worse (click the "Start"
menu to shutdown Windows is one good example).
Macs never destroy data files without asking. Try it
on some dummy documents in any program you like and see. Bruce just hankers
for the old days of OS9. I don't; the current uptime on my BDS Unix based
operating system is 20 days. The remarkable thing about that is that it
isn't at all remarkable, it is routine with OS X! But Bruce can't get over
the fact that some things don't work the way HE says they should.
Read David's book. Much clarity will follow.
Chuck Bouldin
Let's see. The message here is (1) Macs are really
really intuitive and easy to use, and (2) I should buy a book called "The
Missing Manual" which is just out and go read it, so that I will understand
that when the Mac vaporizes my file it really hasn't done that. Also, that
pretending to have destroyed your file is not serious compared to having to
to to the START menu to shut the machine down, that being far less intuitive
than going to the Apple symbol on the Menu bar.
And it's all my fault, for not having learned about
about how it all works.
But Macs are very intuitive and easy to use, unless
you're a damned fool idiot like me?
Actually, I was capable of inferring that what was
probably destroyed was a pointer, or shortcut, and that the document itself
didn't get zapped. Whether or not Aunt Minnie would understand that isn't so
clear.
But thank you for confirming my suspicion, that the
Mac doesn't really destroy documents when you drag them off the Dock. They
may be hard to find, but they are still there. I was pretty sure of that,
although that anti-dock article doesn't make it entirely clear.
There are a number of complex programs that work on
faith: that is, if you have faith that the program really can do what you
want, and you keep on searching, eventually you will discover the way to do
it. Once you know how to do it, it will seem simple, so much so that when
someone asks you about it, you may forget just how hard you had to work to
find out how it was done, and be tempted to say "it's obvious" and dismiss
the questioner as lazy or stupid or both.
=========================================
Dear Doctor Pournelle,
I am not an American citizen but I have been following
your discussions of US and coalition activities in Iraq. It seems that a lot
of your views were shared by pre-invasion planners among the Uniformed
military and State Department planners. It is a real tragedy that those
plans seem to have been ignored by the Defense Department with the observed
results of the last nine months.
I found some interesting documents about the effects
of intelligent people focusing on the political machinations within the
administration rather than the reality on the ground.
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/2003/reconirq/reconirq.pdf
is a US Army War College analysis of potential problems in Iraq
I'm not sure of the status of "The Atlantic" but these
two articles by James Fallows (one published before the invasion, one
published recently) seem to give a good account of the effects of turf wars
in the Administration on the situation of the civilians and troops in Iraq.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/11/fallows.htm discusses
the problems of occupying Iraq in 2002
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/01/media-preview/fallows.htm _
_investigates why the plans where abandoned and the impact of that change
I have seen opinions that the military are very angry
with the Democrats in the USA. I suspect that the US military officer corps,
who seem to be very well read, will not forget that they were stuck into a
meat grinder to make an ideological point for a neo-conservative clique
within a Republican administration. You may well soon be faced with a very
competent bunch of warriors who say "a plague on both your houses". I hope
the tradition of the military in a democracy holds up.
Rgds
Tom Ayerst
If we find that we have left our bones to bleach in
these desert lands for nothing, beware the fury of the legions. From a
Centurion in North Africa, not long before Septimius Severus brought his
Legions from Africa and "they had discovered the dread secret, that emperors
could be made in places other than Rome."
But nothing of that sort will ever happen again.
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Doing
Business in Iraq
