| Friday, April
15, 2005 Subject: Letter
from England
The politicians are dancing in the streets <http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,1460401,00.html>
, but meanwhile a terrorism case collapses. See: <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/14/wood_green_ricin_case/>
, <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1570083,00.html>
, <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1570085,00.html>
, <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1569915,00.html>
, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1460204,00.html>
, and <http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1460369,00.html>
.
Note that in this article, Krugman explicitly avoids
including the UK NHS in his argument, even though its costs are comparable
with those in France and Germany: <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/15/opinion/15krugman.html>
(registration may be required). My experience is of poor service, lost
referrals, long lines for anything not handled at the clinic, and young
doctors who couldn't be bothered by anything involving quality of life or
age.
-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Senior Lecturer of Computing,
University of Sunderland. Computational neuroscientist modeling bat
bioacoustics and behavior. http://osiris.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0her
===============
Subject: Today in History 15 April 1952 : First Flight
of YB-52
Subj: Today in History 15 April 1952: First Flight of
YB-52
http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/avb52_1.html
== The first prototype was given the designation
"XB-52" and the second the designation "YB-52". The second prototype was
given a "Y" code, which would normally indicate an evaluation machine,
rather than an "X" code as was appropriate to its experimental status,
because the Air Force had scrounged funding for it from their Logistics
Command, which was not formally allowed to fund experimental aircraft.
The XB-52 was rolled out on 29 November 1951. The
rollout was done late at night and with the aircraft bundled under tarps to
help maintain secrecy. Unfortunately the XB-52 suffered a catastrophic
failure of its pneumatic system during ground testing that caused extensive
damage to the trailing edge of the wing that sent it back inside the factory
for lengthy repairs before it could perform a flight.
The YB-52 was rolled out on 15 March 1952 and actually
performed the first flight, on 15 April 1952, with Boeing test pilot A.M.
"Tex" Johnson and Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guy M. Townsend at the
controls. The flight lasted a little under three hours, with takeoff from
Boeing Field in Seattle and landing at Moses Lake, in central Washington. ==
And they're still flying! Well not *that* one, but
still... .
Rod Montgomery==monty@sprintmail.com
And my first aerospace job was associated with the
B-52. The old ladies areally are older than their pilots now. I worked with
Townsend on the ejections seat designs. And knew Tex Johnson.
============
Subject: Slippery Slope
Argument Proven Right?
Dr. Pournelle:
It appears that you don't have to be in a "persistent
vegetative state" to be denied food and water, at least in some states.
Weren't we promised by the "Right to Die" folks that Terri Schiavo's death
wouldn't lead to a "slippery slope?"
-----------------
MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH Granddaughter denies feeding tube to grandma
81-year-old not terminally ill, comatose, nor in vegetative state
________________________________
Posted: April 7, 2005 7:33 p.m. Eastern
By Sarah Foster
_____
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
In a situation recalling the recent death of
Terri Schiavo in Florida, an 81-year-old widow, denied nourishment and
fluids for nearly two weeks, is clinging to life in a hospice in LaGrange,
Ga., while her immediate family fights desperately to save her life before
she dies of starvation and dehydration.
Mae Magouirk was not terminally ill, comatose
nor in a "vegetative state," when Hospice-LaGrange <http://www.wghs.org/wgh.html>
accepted her as a patient about two weeks ago upon the request of her
granddaughter, Beth Gaddy, 36, an elementary school teacher.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Read the entire story at:
http://wnd.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43688
Lee Keller King
mailto:leekellerking @hotmail.com
I don't know the particulars of this case, but
there will be many others. The temptation to let the old, disabled, and
helpless go to rest in peace so that the rest of us can get on with our
lives is very great. Perhaps it is even right. But of course from old
disabled and helpless to young disabled and helpless is a very short step.
And from there to "useless" is not very far. And from "useless" there are
roads everywhere.
Perhaps that is the proper path. What do the
useless matter anyway? Why waste resources on them? Rich nations can bash
down curbs to make life easier for wheelchairs. We used to be that rich, not
all that long ago.
=====================
Subject: Follow-up to
Paper Generator--"Scientific conference falls for gibberish prank"
Three grad students generated a paper, submitted it to
an academic conference, and it was accepted for presentation. I have a PDF
of the below article in the event it is pulled from the net. This
information courtesy of an Australian blogger Tim Blair.
http://timblair.net/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200504/s1345732.htm
Jeremy Stribling said that he and two fellow MIT
graduate students questioned the standards of some academic conferences, so
they wrote a computer program to generate research papers complete with
nonsensical text, charts and diagrams.
To their surprise, one of the papers - “Rooter: A
Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy” -
was accepted for presentation.
“Rooter" features such mind-bending gems as: “the
model for our heuristic consists of four independent components: simulated
annealing, active networks, flexible modalities, and the study of
reinforcement learning” and “We implemented our scatter/gather I/O server in
Simula-67, augmented with opportunistically pipelined extensions”.
I LOVE it!
=======
Subject: A Black Letter Day...
Hi Jerry,
I enjoyed your thoughts today, as always. You might
find a new book by Richard Florida, "The Flight of the Creative Class,"
relevant to your musings. It discusses a variety of post 9/11 policies that
have not only damaged the United States’ capacity to attract top foreign
students and scientists, but our ability to keep our own best students and
scientists. The causes, according to Florida, include nonsensical visa
requirements, slashes in government R&D funding, a global perception of a
growing U.S. intolerance (fueled by the religious right), and the horrible
state of our K-12 educational system.
He offers a number of possible solutions, including
substantial changes to our immigration and educational systems.
Best wishes,
don
Don Barker, Senior Editor
PC AI Magazine
==============
Subject: Libertarians and conservatives
>> Are we likely to change? Will be bring back
freedom? What party speaks for liberty? And yes, I know the answer to that
one; but every time I get near Libertarians their first move is to denounce
conservatives as fools and idiots. <<
I think that's unfair. I'm a radical libertarian, but
I have never denounced you as a fool or an idiot, nor ever come close to
thinking of you in those terms. It is true that we have fundamental
disagreements, and even perhaps that our differences greatly outweigh our
similarities. But I respect your opinions even when I don't agree with them.
It's unfair to paint all libertarians with the same
brush, unless you are yourself willing to be grouped with everyone who
considers himself a conservative.
-- Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com
I should have said organized Libertarians. As for
instance the time I was invited to a big Libertarian dinner party, at which
all the speeches and all the jokes were at the expense of conservatives.
Sure made me feel like being part of the movement.
Niven said once Libertarianism is a vector not a
position, and on that I agree; but I haven't entirely given up normal
politics with a view to actually electing someone.
The problem is that the Republicans run
conservative govern imperial/socialist. The Democrats run socialist and
govern worse. I am no great fan of George Bush, and his father fired every
friend I had in the Reagan White House as a reward for Regan's loyalty to
his vice president; but Kerry would have been worse, God help us.
There is no party that wants to cut the budget,
enforce the immigration laws, bring the troops home, and cut the entire
scope of Federal interference in our affairs: yet not all that long ago
there was one, called the Republican Party, that actually wanted to abolish
the Department of Education. And had they not run the only man Clinton could
beat in 1996 we might still have such a party. But Dole was entitled to run,
knowing he would lose, knowing he would fail miserably. God knows why.
If the Republicans could return to their senses I
wouldn't much worry about crooks. There are crooks everywhere. It's the
busybody nanny state that says Civil Servants are better than crooks, and
better to spend four times as much on bureaucrats and regulations than to
have anyone stealing anything that worries me.
Crooks we can jail, but Das Buros immer stehen.
And see below
==========
Perhaps I ought to just stop:
Subject: your blithering babbling
Dear Sir
I have read your works starting in 1972 when I was a
sophomore in college...One of my favorite literary characters is Colonel
Falkenberg and CD 42nd Marines......
I love the universe you created with The Mote In God's
Eye and King David's Spaceship, my copies both falling apart from being read
and read again...so,
I was on your web page and read your blog on the trade
deficient and what we could try to do save ourselves, then you said what you
thought was the problem.......
the schools are there for the professors? the big
problem are the unions? are you a libertaian or just stupid?
the percentage of American workers today in the unions
is the lowest it has everbeen...with such low numbers, where is their power?
But what the hell, there is always Wal-Mart to crush any idea of a union so
I guess Wal_mart can keep locking the illeagal immigrints inside the store
at night....toys for children, made by children..... our corporations are
selling us down the Yangtze River..not our unionsk, not our schools, its the
freaking corporations that are generating the trade loss....
I live in syracuse, ny, once home of Carrier...they
had a factory that was still making money, but they closed it so they, the
corporation, could make more ....what should the workers do? become
indenturesd servents to the corporations? are you going to bring up the
teacher's unions in our schools? please................ the problems in the
schools are not from the teachers not doing their jobs, but the parents and
the adminisrtators not doing thiers.....we all know about the violence in
our schools, and please remeber it is a small number of schools dealing with
this, but as you know, it makes the news
what can be worse for a school is to have students in
a classroom who don't care and who do their best to disrupt the teaching
experience for everyone else in the room, or even the entire school...and
heaven forbid if you try to get these students out of your classroom
as you can see, I tend to think of myself as liberal
conservative, or is a conservative liberal?
I still read what you publish and enjoy it....the
fiction at least
Dennis salenski syracuse ny
Perhaps everything has changed since last I looked,
but it is my understanding that many administrators belong to teacher
unions, and in fact often dominate them since they have the released time
(paid for by taxes) to do the work required. As to disruptive students, I
would have thought the schools might actually campaign for the ability to
expel the unruly and move the others to places where they cannot do any
harm; but I don't see much of that happening.
What are your remedies? Given your view of my
observations, what do you propose?
Incidentally I am well aware that labor unions as
such are not large: in fact most labor union members work for the
government. There is an irony in that, is there not? Somehow we have
policies that have made it difficult to impossible for us to make THINGS,
and our unions mostly represent the tax absorbers rather than the tax
payers. This is a distinct change from the days when the Pinkertons
dynamited my wife's father's house (the house was owned by the mines) for
organizing a miner's union. See John Dos Pasos for more; MidCentury is still
quite readable.
And again: your remedies?
==========
Subject: Trade Deficit
Just some food for thought – no well-organized
arguments
The trade account and the capital account have to sum
to zero, so a trade deficit is the same as a capital account surplus. That
is, we are selling financial assets and buying goods with them. Are these
consumption goods or investment goods? I haven’t looked at the official
statistics recently, but it would be interesting to know the mix.
Suppose the U.S. were a very safe place to invest,
good legal protection of financial contracts (relative to the rest of the
world). Then even if the U.S. was not a declining industrial power, the fact
that foreigners really want to buy U.S. assets would force a capital account
surplus and a trade deficit.
I happen to agree that US policies are doing harm to
US competitiveness and harming the average US worker, but I’m not sure the
trade deficit is a clear-cut sign of this. Most countries in the world run
trade deficits and the net sum of all the trade accounts is negative, even
though it out to be zero (unless we really are trading with other
planets/dimensions). The way the data are gathered biases the numbers in the
direction of trade deficits, though presumably the bias does not change
radically over time.
Even countries with lousy economic policies can run
trade surpluses. Saudi Arabia comes to mind.
Kerk Phillips
Indeed. And it is a larger subject; one of the
problems of dealing with such matters while trying to pay bills and taxes.
But the bottom line is that those who can make good and cheap and useful
THINGS will do well; while those who sell services will always find
themselves in competition with someone closer to the problem (and quite
possibly better educated).
I don't fear trade deficits as such: it's buying
things with capital, and consumables with savings that disturbs.
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