View 231 November 11

THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 231 November 11 - 17, 2002

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Monday November 11, 2002

Armistice Day

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget.

In Flanders Fields

by Lt. Col. John McCrae, M.D. (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

As we remember the end of the War to End all War, we prepare for the next of the savage wars of peace. Perpetual war for perpetual peace is the fate of the empire that would impose world order. It may be a noble mission; certainly many believe that, and I can be persuaded of it myself.

I wrote this some time ago:

Long ago a Centurion wrote home from North Africa: "We hear that there are tumults and riots in Rome, and that voices are raised concerning the army and the quality of our soldiers. Make haste to reassure us that you love and support us as we love and support you, for if we find that we have left our bones to bleach in these sands in vain, then beware the fury of the legions."

That's not an exact quote but it's close enough. So long as the army believes that the soldiers and the citizens are one, we have nothing to fear. When the army believes that the politicians hold the soldiers in contempt and ignore their wishes, beware the fury of the legions.

Those who send soldiers to foreign lands should remember that there are obligations on those who send as well as on those who are sent. The obligations are real, and must not be evaded.

In a lighter vein, I will try to consolidate the puppy pictures and put up more. It is a sunny day in Los Angeles, a good day to wash the puppy -- she couldn't figure out what we were doing to her -- then let her run around to cure the hiccoughs the bath seems to have induced.

It's a gorgeous day, and my only regret is they won't let me take Sable for a hike. She regrets it too.

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Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Cleaning up. Woke up inspired on a scene in BURNING TOWER so I will do that rather than play here.

Sable continues to grow and I have lots of pictures which I'll get up when I come up for air.

Puppy Pictures on their own web page. They are thumbnails to some BIG files because I have had no chance to edit them. But she's still the world's cutest puppy.

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Wednesday, November 13, 2002

Iraq has called the UN's hand, and says they are eager to accept inspectors. The President can call this a victory and stand down. I have no idea whether he will or not.

And an interesting question:

Jerry,

If we can analyze somebody's digital voice track to identify "unique voice print", then why couldn't the AlQuedia record someone with a very similar speech, and use a digital sound editor to alter that track to make it sound just like Bin?

Couldn't the voice of Paul Harvey read the news forever?

Bruce Kebbekus

I know you can make a particular celebrity an instrument for a sound card; how closely that matches, and whether a good analysis program would be able to detect with certainty what you did, I would guess that a short set of questions and answers could be edited by hand after being put through a synthesizer. So yes, Paul Harvey can be around forever, and so can bin Laden. For a guess, anyway.

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Thursday, November 14, 2002

I have a few die-hard Democrats among my readers, and it might surprise them to know that I grew up as one; as did my wife and her father. In their case, having their house dynamited by the Pinkertons because of her father's union activities may have had a bit to do with it.

Clearly we are no longer die-hard Democrats in this house, but I'm not precisely a yellow dog Republican either.

Think of these quotes:

"An economy constrained by high tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance the budget, just as it will never create enough jobs and enough economic growth."

And on a large capital gains tax cuts:

"The tax on capital gains directly affects investment decisions, the mobility and flow of risk capital ... the ease or difficulty experiences by new ventures in obtaining capital, and thereby the strength and potential for growth in the economy."

I expect you know that was John F. Kennedy, and he was absolutely correct; today's Democrats want to raise taxes, because they are afraid they won't have the revenue for their social programs. Yet the Reagan tax cuts -- Reagan learned his economics from Kennedy, and Kennedy gave us the first Long Boom since the Depression, and thus was no bad teacher -- the Reagan tax cuts produced much greater tax revenues than anyone had anticipated, and only the Democrat spending spree during the time of the military buildup that won the Cold War gave us a deficit.

One reason I disliked the Democrats for a good part of my life was that they blackmailed us on the Cold War: give us these spending programs, or we won't let you go win the war. Fortunately that era is over and most of those people are gone; and the Cold War is over, and we don't have to have world hegemony.

When the Democrats begin to get some economic sense and drop some of the ideology, I'll be glad to leave the Stupid Party. I'm already for "tariff for revenue" which was the historic Democrat platform. And Democrats were, when I was growing up, the party of States' Rights. Could it be again? But at the moment they have a San Francisco Liberal -- Liberal even by California standards -- as Minority Leader (and given her policies Minority is likely where she will stay).

So I tell my Democrat friends: what happened to the Democratic Leadership Council? To Moynihan who alone seemed to stand out for sense and decency and incidentally for a Kennedy style tax cut? The Republicans are the Stupid Party, but if the alternative is to vote for higher taxes, I suspect even the Republicans are not that stupid.

BEN and Donna Edwards, I have your check but not your email address...

Geoffrey Kidd I need your email address

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Friday, November 15, 2002

You will see when you go to www.byte.com that BYTE is going "subscription". It's cheap enough, $12 a year, and the reasons are simple: advertising isn't a viable model for a magazine like BYTE unless we have a good handle on how many actually read it. Paid circulation is still an important number.

I urge all of you to sign up. I am, and yes, I know I could get it free, but I'd pay for BYTE if I didn't write for the book. So I'll pay now.

If you've not seen the Navy/Marine Corps Operation Enduring Freedom movie trailer yet, it's worth a few minutes time.

Mark

http://www.lifelines2000.org/module/brd
/brd_default.asp?action=clip&channel=123

Agreed. Well worth the download time.

And The Global Economy surfaces again as a topic of discussion. See mail.

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