| Friday, April
6, 2007
I received this
today; I have no way to verify the source, but it does speak for itself.
Subject: Jon Town and his "personality disorder"
Mr. Pournelle;
I just wanted to send you an email after reading the comments about the
Jon Town article that was published in The Nation from freelance writer
Joshua Kors since I am the "Mr. Unnamed Official". I also sent this to
another blog that was question the article and possibly thought it also came
from an anti-war stance or someone who was purposely trying to make the
Military look bad. First I will tell you a little bit about myself and my
story and then I will complete the story of Jon Town.
Let me give you a small portion of what personally happened to me. I am
an Iraq War Veteran who came home from Iraq with many issues, one being
mental related. So I too sought help from the Mental Health professions at
the Army Hospital . On the first visit and within the first 15 minutes of
the one on one with the Psyche I was told that I could be out of the Army
within 2 weeks if I took a personality disorder discharge. I went home that
evening and looked up AR 635-200 chapter 5-13 and read about it (being the
army geek that I am). I went back the next day and told my doctor that I
didn't feel that a personality disorder was what I had. My doctor
immediately started the paperwork to begin the MEB process. 4 months later
my 10 year military career came to an end with the PEB giving me a 30%
disability rating which made me medically retired. I now receive half my
base pay, all military installation benefits to include commissary and PX
privileges and Tricare Prime for me and my family. Even though I will have
this disability for the rest of my life, I find myself lucky that I went
home that evening and read the regulation.
Jon Town believed his doctor and chooses not to read the regulation. Jon
Town was an infantry soldier who listens to his leaders, he was trained to
listen and respond to orders. If someone tells him to do something, he does
it. No questions asked. He trusted a doctor, a jag officer and his unit
commander. All these people are part of the Discharge system.
After being discharged, I decided the only thing I knew was soldiering
and I missed being around troops. So I went to work as an out processor.
Myself and another 20 year retired veteran are the only two that do this
part of the out processing here at our installation. We were both there the
day Jon Town came in. The 20 year vet (Paul) was so disgusted when he heard
Town's story and after taking care of more and more Iraq vets with
personality disorders said to me "we need to do something about this".
There are many in-house organizations that this could have been brought
to, but we felt it was better for the discharged soldier to tell the story
rather than an employee of the Defense Department.
Josh Kors doesn't finish the story so let me. Jon Town went to his
congressman who made this a big issue with my installation and the Pentagon.
After many months of work, Jon Town's debt to the military was wiped away
and he also received payment for Separation Pay due to the fact that he had
served over 6 years and was involuntarily discharged. The Pentagon asked
Town, in his words "To shut up about this", which obviously he didn't.
Paul and I give out the phone number of numerous Veterans Service
Organizations and Veterans Advocacy agency to help these soldiers fix this
issue. We also have helped some of these agency's fix this issue with the
DOD. We have had numerous visits from Senator Kit Bond (R), Senator Barbara
Boxer (D), and Senator Barrack Obama (D) who have come to fix this problem.
The number of personality disorders here at this installation has
declined severely since Josh Kors started writing his piece. I know that the
article was slanted and I tried to help Mr. Kors stay unbiased since this is
not a political issue. I didn't know that it was going to be in the Nation
(my fault, should have asked), I'd rather it had been on the front page of
USA Today or the cover of Time Magazine. Something that has a better
reputation than the obviously far-left leaning The Nation. Our sole purpose
of getting this story out was to show the American people that we as a
nation must take care of our Veterans. We owe it to every American hero.
Lastly, I would like to apologize for one thing. I remain unnamed for
selfish reasons, I need to feed my children and I just don't trust the
Federal Government.
Please feel free to ask me anything else.
=========
Subj: SpaceX - Second Falcon-1 launch postmortem as of
27 Mar 2007
http://spacex.com/updates.php#
demoflight_2_prelim_review_2
The second stage shut down early because the LOX in
the tank was sloshing away from the sump.
The LOX was sloshing because the control system
couldn't recover from the combined effects of the first stage hitting the
second stage nozzle during separation, "followed by a hard slew to get back
on track."
The first stage hit the second stage nozzle during
separation because the vehicle was rotating faster than expected.
The vehicle was rotating so fast because the shutdown
transient for the first-stage engine turned out to be different from what
they expected and allowed for.
So they're going to put baffles in the second-stage
LOX tank and change the first-stage shutdown sequence.
And fly again.
Rod Montgomery==monty@sprintmail.com
==========
Subject: Oil, Energy, Food, and
Chemicals
Background - I'm a 44 year old chemical engineer who
works for a large petrochemical company. These thoughts are my own and do
not reflect any company position. Feel free to cut and paste if this note is
too long.
Nukes (and eventually space solar) are great for
generating electricity. With enough electricity you can do pretty much
anything ... AS LONG AS YOU ARE STATIONARY (or at least very large ... ship
or locomotive in size)
Nukes work very well for ocean going vessels and with
the improvement in battery technology they'll work well for short haul
automobiles.
If you want to fly a plane - there's really no
substitute for jet fuel.... safe, portable, high energy density.
However, if you want to maintain a first world
standard of living the best use of our increasingly expensive petroleum may
be as a chemical and plastic feedstock. Once you burn it - it's gone ... CO2
and H2O. But if you make plastic, medicine, lube oil ... you can use it,
recycle when feasible, and eventually burn it and recover almost all of the
original energy.
Plastic makes your car lighter so it gets better
mileage (miles per gallon or miles per battery charge).
Plastic keeps your food from spoiling. My friends in
Africa state that local farmers lose 50% of their crop to spoilage - either
in the field, in storage, or during transport. Polyethylene bags are a
modest proposal that is much more attractive than the eating of infants.
Polymers = paint/varnish that keeps your wood from
rotting. Polymers = metal coating so it doesn't rust ... and it keeps the
food in tin cans from tasting funny Polymers = fabrics ... nylon, rayon,
polyester, polypropylene, fleece, Gor-tex, etc Polymers = all types of glue,
adhesives, sealants, caulks
You can make analogs of most chemicals and plastics
using biomaterials. But they are typically more expensive and usually don't
work as well. I don't really want my food storage container to be
biodegradable - that defeats the purpose. I want to keep the rats and
microbes OUT.
It's a sad ending to our story if my greatgrandkids
are forced to wear homespun cotton and pack their soybeans in bags made from
hemp and jute because I burned all the easily available chemical feedstocks
in my SUV.
p.s. In case of emergency we can always dock our Navy
nuclear reactors and plug them into the local utility grid - this should
hold back the dark ages for a while. I'm sure your son Phillip has done at
least one contingency planning exercise of this type.
Jim Coffey
While transition from internal combustion
to electricity for mobile systems will take time, it's not impossible,
particularly with hybrids. Fuel cells are promising. Energy storage needs
more work, and I have advocated government X Projects on mobile energy
storage systems for more than thirty years. There are also methods for
recharging stations on the Interstates that would allow much of the truck
traffic to be electric on the highways -- but only if we have the kilowatts
to do it. Until there is a prospect of more cheap electricity there's little
incentive to work on conversions.
Of course I agree that petrochemicals are
too valuable as feedstocks to simply set fire to them. I think I first said
that in Galaxy in 1974, and I know that's in my A Step Farther Out. Thanks.
==
Subject: Ships Burning Bunker Oil in the Port of LA
Jerry, I work with a rather large oil company and can
verify that ocean going ships tend to burn yucky junk called "bunker oil."
I attended a recent conference in LA and a
representative from the port of LA told us that they were planning to change
the regulations to not allow ships to burn high sulfur oil within X miles of
the California coast. They were also creating infrastructure to allow both
ships and trucks to plug into an electricity grid to provide power while
they were sitting idle during the loading/unloading process. The port of LA
generates an apparently large amount of NOX and VOC's from trucks and ships
sitting idle but maintaining airconditioning and lights.
I see this as an excellent example of a good local law
for a specific local issue - air quality in the LA basin. The issue of
jurisdiction came up - LA has authority within the port, but when you leave
the port the USA Congress/EPA Critters in Washington (God rest their souls)
probably has jurisdiction until the ship reaches international waters.
Since electricity doesn't come for free this means
that the pollution (and or nuke plant) must be located "out of sight, out of
mind" somewhere in the valley.... creating the wonderful electrical
generating capacity for the survivors of Footfall and Lucifer's Hammer.
Jim Coffey
==========
Subject: Lack of Skilled Workers
Jerry,
Don’t believe that a lack of skilled US workers is the
problem. The problem is a lack of skilled US workers willing to work 80
hours/week for $30K a year. A US citizen knows better; an H1B holder has no
choice.
As an electrical engineer I can no longer in good
conscience speak to high school students and try to convince them to thing
about engineering or science. The jobs aren’t there in most of the country.
Why take very hard classes, get a diploma and wind up struggling for a job
that has no future? In the past two years my income has steadily fallen by
about 25%. And at this point I’m happy to just have a job that doesn’t
require 4 hours on the road every day getting in and out of downtown
Chicago.
The problem isn’t a lack of skilled people; it is a
lack of respect for science and engineering in general. It is Wall Street’s
attitude that all jobs (except the CEO’s) should be done in India, China or
eastern Europe at wages that you can’t live on in the US.
I wonder if novels can be written in India or South
Africa…
Norman
I don't disagree. My solution would be to
raise across the board tariffs; but then I have always thought that the
purpose of a country is to help its citizens, not to try to equalize world
wages.
Democracy and unrestricted capitalism are
not compatible. A world that has no values but the market. The market will
sell people if allowed to do so.
=========
Mystery of Greek Amphitheater's Amazing Sound Finally
Solved.
http://www.livescience.com/history/
070405_greeks_acoustics.html
- Roland Dobbins
=========
Subject: Well, duh!
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/4/4/1
<snip>
Relativity trick slashes computing times
Simulating the interactions between
relativistic objects -- those travelling close to the speed of light --
can take enormous amounts of computer time. But according to Jean-Luc
Vay of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US, this time can be
slashed enormously by considering how the interactions occur from the
point of view of a fast-moving observer -- a short cut made possible by
Einstein's century-old theory of relativity that no one seems to have
noticed before (Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 130405).
</snip>
Do scientist ever slap themselves in the forehead and
go, "Well, duh?" Haven't graphics programmers been doing something similar
for matrix calculations for over 10 years?
Braxton S. Cook
=========
Miscellaneous comments on today's mail
Item about Mr. Town. (1) Out of
curiosity, any indication what prompted the author to write you? (2) Do you
concur from this assessment that, in summary, the problem was isolated to
one or two bases rather than general; that it is being resolved correctly
(barring keelhauling of the culpable officials); and that it is being
exaggerated somewhat to the benefit of the far-left media and bloggers.
Item from Mr. Coffey (1) Do I
need to see if I (or someone) can develop an economical solar-powered plant
to reduce atmospheric CO2 and H2O back to olefins and oxygen? I know how to
brute-force it (well, OK, I have a reasonable concept for a process to
brute-force it), but the cost per ton product even at production scale would
be prohibitive (probably about a dollar per pint for sweet-crude-equivalent,
which will not be economical for several more decades, particularly for fuel
- unless OPEC cuts us completely off, or their well heads start to glow in
the dark...). (2) Or should we just continue hoping for the turkey-guts
process to take hold.
Item from Norman (1) It was
reiterated today by Rush's guest host that while manufacturing employment is
a fraction of what it was, per capita manufacturing and total manufacturing
in the US has increased dramatically due to improvements in technology. (2)
What would be the net result of a tariff which required an importer to
certify that the goods were manufactured in full compliance with US labor,
occupational health and safety, and environmental regulation -- with US
inspectors allowed to inspect and audit foreign plants and suppliers who
wished to claim compliance at their own or the importer's expense -- or to
pay a tariff equal to the cost differential between their current situation
as estimated by the US government without inspection/audit, and the
estimated cost of production and FOB delivery from a US manufacturer. I
strongly suspect that this would be a negligible tariff from most of Western
Europe, Japan, and Taiwan -- and would at least double the on-dock prices of
most goods from China and SE Asia. Even more if "carbon credits" from
transport have to be included in the computation. That is where the major
inequity lies...
Item from Mr. Cook Way back when I
was in grad school, lo these many moons ago, almost all of our analysis was
performed in the Center of Mass frame and boosted to the lab frame. If
Fermilab and CERN could do it in the early 1980's, why not LBNL?
(Relativistic Kinematics by Hagedorn was my friend then...)
Jim
Regarding the first item, I have no idea
why this was sent to me. I would guess that in good part the problem is less
pervasive than it appears, and I suspect that many of those who publicize it
really do not wish the military well.
Regarding CO2 reduction, we need to know
(1) do we really want to do it? and (2) how to do that; I suggest prizes.
Sir Richard has offered $25 million, but a couple of billion prize for
reliable CO2 reduction would be a better idea.
Regarding adjusting tariff for conditions
it is complicated; it would work if enforceable, but I am not sure how one
does that. Across the board would probably be better.
=========
"They're just making it like they didn't intend to do
that."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-
classsize4apr04,1,3631079.story
-- Roland Dobbins
Is anyone surprised?
=========
Subject: Labor shortages
Dear Jerry:
A long story in the current Business Week describes
labor shortages worldwide. The joker in the deck is that these are all
skilled positions and that the shortages seemed to be caused by the
reluctance of large corporations to raise wages and perks. It makes
interesting reading. Mexico has an 82 percent shortage in skilled
positions...and the list, across the board in all nations and all firms ,
includes sales representatives. That's a skill I have, but I'm not at all
tempted, given that I was routinely cheated by every employer I had on the
sales commissions I earned, except when I was real estate broker and
basically running my own one person show. There is nothing really enjoyable
about sales work except the money, so if you take that away, why do the job?
And "once burned, twice shy". I've sold everything from Christmas cards to
security services, but no more. I don't need the money and I don't need the
grief.
Which brings us to that lamentable decision by Circuit
City to fire 3,400 of their most senior sales staff because they make too
much money. My reaction to this was "What are you? Nuts?" The best of these
will go to the competition and those who take the lower wages will develop
that sense of entitlement that permits any theft or cheat they can devise.
Look for "shrinkage" at Circuit City to go sky high on the excuse "they owe
me this." In the annals of bad management decisions, this one will be a MBA
case study.
At this point, I am having trouble finding sympathy
for all those computer geeks who complain about foreign labor coming in.
There are jobs everywhere. One may have to retrain or even learn a new
language and move to a new country, but if you make the effort, you can find
the work you want. This is a nation of immigrants. Most of our ancestors
came here for exactly that reason; to find a way to make a living.
Conversely, employers who complain about labor shortages also get short
shrift. As that Business Week article points out, any economist will tell
you that labor shortages disappear when you meet the price that labor wants.
Sincerely,
Francis Hamit
But importing people to absorb all the
entry level jobs depresses all wages, and is not the way to build a middle
class. Rule by the middle class is the only way democracy can work. Huge
discrepancies between classes causes disruption of society; that's followed
by some kind of circulation of elites.
=========
Subject: Easter Comes to North
Korea
The Dear Leader may have gone too far this time - He's
up and eaten the Easter Bunny - all 24 pounds of him
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2007/04/bunny_boiler_ki.html
Russell Seitz
========
'The police say the arrests followed a request by the
school's principal.'
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_095170448.html
Roland Dobbins
An extreme case of the "broken window"
tactic?
===========
"It's quite possible she'll end up back in her old
position."
http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?
type=domesticNews&storyID=2007-04-03T183428Z
_01_N03370936_RTRIDST_0_CANADA-CRIME-FECES
-COL.XML
- Roland Dobbins
Why not?
TOP
CURRENT
VIEW Friday
|
