Monthly Archives: July 2011

Mail 683 Monday July 11, 2011

· Letter from Mariposa

· The View from Tycho

· No Longer a Space Faring Nation

· Farewell to the Archduke

·

[Note: I am still experimenting. There will be lines and other stuff in here. I hope it’s not too distracting.]

And BYTE is back http://www.informationweek.com/byte/

Many prominent UK politicians have an Oxford PPE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy,_Politics_and_Economics . This is considered to be a dilettante’s degree, consisting in American terms of three minors–a year of philosophy, a year of political science, and a year of economics, none studied in depth. In particular, no training in law or history or anything quantitative. They begin to be involved in politics during their three years at university, and move to the big leagues at graduation, where there is a real tendency for them to get in over their heads.

Phone hacking story: http://tinyurl.com/44rm8mq

Blair commenting on where Labour went wrong: http://tinyurl.com/3q8w3y8 "Parties of the left have a genetic tendency to cling to an analysis that they lose because the leadership is insufficiently committed to being left, defined in a very traditional sense. There’s always a slightly curious problem with this analysis since usually they have lost to a rightwing party. But somehow that inconvenient truth is put to the side."

UK inflation up: http://tinyurl.com/425jv4g

Boat thief caught in action: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-14076170

Imported tech spiked with vulnerabilities: http://tinyurl.com/642q6hk

Jim Dunnigan’s comments on tech war: http://tinyurl.com/3p2s4tm . I tried to get a program going to teach security engineering in the UK, but it didn’t recruit enough students to sustain it. Not the easiest subject to learn, and most UK students take difficulty into account when they choose their MSc program. Those who we did recruit did very well, but students that good are rare. Students who take my final year module in that area seem to regard it highly and find it often leads to a job.

The second person to subscribe to my new wordpress blog http://crowan-scat.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw/ViewFromEngland/ is a known blog spammer…

I don’t know what to say about the vote to kill the James Webb Space Telescope: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/science/07webb.html

—

"We do not understand how a country,… can produce people who seem to be acting without thinking, let alone making serious efforts to investigate the consequences of their actions." (Mary Evans in the Times Higher Education)

Harry Erwin

It is only recently that politicians’ education has been important in getting elected. College degrees were not much of a qualification: what was important was life experience, particularly for executive off and especially as President. The one time Harry Truman ran for President he could list as qualification that he was President of the United States. I doubt anyone reading this knows what, if any, Truman’s college experience was. Eisenhower was a West Point graduate. Nixon didn’t depend on his college qualifications. Kennedy liked to pretend to a better education than he had – he was an indifferent student – and relied on academia to supply him with advisors. Over time there has been a tendency to plead credentials, but it has never been a strong American tradition.

I would be curious to know why the phone hacking scandal resulted in actually folding the News of the World. That seems a bit drastic.

WSJ links

When I want to send a WSJ link to someone I search Google with the full title then click on news on the left side. The WSJ article comes up. This link is a referral link and must come from Google. I then copy the URL for the search and attach it to as a link in my email. Example:

The Road to Serfdom and the Arab Revolt http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=The+Road+to+Serfdom+and+the+Arab+Revolt#q=The+Road+to+Serfdom+and+the+Arab+Revolt&hl=en&prmd=ivnsu&source=lnms&tbm=nws&ei=o9oXTsq-K5OosAORtLHVDQ&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=4&ved=0CBYQ_AUoAw&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=f7da403014ea4f31&biw=1392&bih=815

WSJ wants to be at the top of the Google search returns, but to do that they have to allow someone to follow the link. The compromise seems to be that if you find it by Google with the right kind of search, you can see the whole story by going to the WSJ-on-line link.

iPhone update –

Hi Jerry,

There’s widespread expectation that an update will be released in around September – probably more of an evolutionary change, but one of the big ones is a dual-mode CDMA/GSM phone. That would allow you to migrate to whatever carrier you want (once the contract is up of course).

I always check the MacRumors buying guide at http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/ before making a major Apple purchase. They have the timing pretty well recorded, and have kept me from buyers remorse more than once.

Cheers,

Doug

I understood that, which is why I didn’t just buy an iPhone 4 on the spot, but I will probably get one. My wife simply can’t use and iPhone and we are looking at something with a physical keyboard that has a camera and other smartphone features. Pocket size isn’t so important for her. Being able to use the keyboard is. I admit that I have some problems pecking away on the iPhone keyboard; the best of the pocket phone devices I ever tried as an old RIM way way back when. I could actually write quite quickly with two thumbs with that. I have never been able to write anything worth keeping and not much worth sending as a note with the iPhone, but hope springs eternal…

In my experience there is no reliable way to find out what’s going on at Apple. We all used to have our sources out on the infinite loop, but it’s now easier to find out what’s going on in Plans than get reliable info on Apple’s intentions – at least that’s my experience, and Leo Laporte seems to have the same experience.

Subject: News as satire Down Under: Saving the world from farting camels

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/4480/australian-kill-a-camel-scheme-attacked

Steve Chu

Tycho’s central peak from the LRO

Jerry,

The LRO provides some astonishing pictures

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Tycho itself

<http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/uploads/wac_tycho_highphase.png>

Tycho’s central peak from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter with an "egg" on top <http://lpod.wikispaces.com/July+1%2C+2011>

The "egg" brought down to Earth to see how it compares to something we know.

<http://lpod.wikispaces.com/July+8%2C+2011>

Tycho brought down to Earth and compared to Tokyo (so does Kaguya/Selene as well!) <http://lpod.wikispaces.com/September+12%2C+2008>

The start of the LRO featured pictures

<http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc_browse?page=1>

RE: No Longer a Space Faring Nation

Jerry,

Upon landing of Atlantis, I will be keeping track of how long we are no longer a space faring nation. From Freedom 7 to today we have had a little over 50 years as such a nation.

I did not expect to see Heinlein’s hiatus. I take some solace in that you have said that we will be back on the moon, but with the important caveat that it may not be with US citizens. This is not much solace. I need to remember that despair is a sin.

I hope to know who the real D.D. Harriman is before I die. We need a "Person to Sell the Moon."

Regards, Charles Adams

==

As I think I established in A Step Farther Out, most of the resources available to mankind are out there, not on Earth. We are already mining miles and miles down. Mining the Moon would be easier, except for the big energy penalties for getting to the Moon. Yet much of the cost of space travel is due to design and ignoring operations costs: we established a preference for performance over operations in design priorities way back in Apollo because we were in a race; Shuttle was designed to employ 22,000 development scientists and technicians, and it met its objective nicely. Reusable ships designed to be reused, not rebuilt, and designed to have efficient operations, not employ lots of people (hundreds of launch consoles for Shuttle!) can make space travel an affordable cost for rewards. I went all over that in A Step Farther Out and there’s no point in making the argument again. America may wake up and discover that path; if not, the Chinese, Japanese, Indonesia – someone will find it. Mankind will go to space.

The Archduke and Prince Imperial is dead

Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xavier Felix

Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius von Habsburg-Lothringen has died at

his home on the Starnbergzee

—

Russell Seitz

==

He was a very distant relative, and a patron of two of the orders of which I am honored to hold membership in. I never met him, but I knew some of his friends, and corresponded occasionally with Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn who knew him fairly well. Possony had met him. Knowing he was a distant relative I took care to read some of his works when I was an undergraduate. It may or may not be significant that I remember little of them. From all accounts, though, he would have made a good Emperor. It has always been my belief that Wilson’s utter opposition to the monarchy and his imposition of his system in Europe was the biggest disaster of World War I; Europe would have been a lot better off had the Austrian empire survived, But that is another story and another argument. My favorite story is when the Archduke was asked his view of the Austria-Hungary World Cup soccer match. His response was “Against whom is the team playing?”

= = =

End of EU? for real this time

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/danish-committee-approves-governments-controversial-border-control-plans/2011/07/01/AG5eEKtH_story.html

——–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Articles: The Purposeful Flooding of America’s Heartland –

Of course, we have some of the usual collection of Watermelon Greens screaming that the Midwest floods were caused by CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming). Rational analysis of the situation may lead one in another direction.

The Purposeful Flooding of America’s Heartland

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/the_purposeful_flooding_of_americas_heartland.html

Regards,

Jim Riticher

Mail 682 Sunday July 10, 2011

Letter from England

Subject: Thank you sir!

Dr. J,

I must say that you are my main news-source in the low-bandwidth wasteland of Afghanistan… Keep knocking away with that WordPress stuff, I wish there was an alternative that was working better for you, but for the record, it is good enough for me (even if I prefer the old look, it just isn’t going to happen so we deal with it.)

A fellow soldier from the Dominican Republic(DR) and I were talking about military discipline in the US Army. He was an officer in the DR prior to joining the Army and he mentioned today that he was amazed to see enlisted speaking to officers not at the position of attention, or lower enlisted speaking to NCOs not at the postition of parade rest.

I had the idea that this was a result of the soldier to civilian ratio between the two countries. We back-of-the-enveloped the DR at 50k military to 5mil civilian, and the US at 2.5mil military(with reserves/ng/irr) to 250mil civilians. Or about .5% DR military participation to 1% US military participation.

I went a bit off track, but my theory on discipline at the end of this discussion (carried on while working on the helicopters) was that the larger per capita demands of the US military, and retention needs were the main reasons that he didn’t see the strict military discipline he was used to seeing in other militarys around the world.

In short, somewhere around a half percent of a population would stick around and make a career out of the military and if force demands are one percent of population things like this lack of military discipline will be seen.

I don’t mean lead you to believe that my unit or the Army in general lacks discipline; when something needs to get done, it happens, and quickly.

This coversation was about what he perceived to be an overabundance of familiarity. "Even if I had served with them for fifteen years I still didn’t know their first name," was a comment of his.

When I first joined up I expected an Old School experience, and through my initial training I disappointed with the apparent lack of rigor. I was amazed that NCOs couldn’t give wall to wall counseling sessions anymore, or that after a certain period of time you might talk to your First Sergeant at anything other than a position of parade rest &c…

I am somewhat used to this familiarity now, and this conversation got me to thinking about pros/cons.

Does this familiarity we have with each other in an operational setting actually enhance our capabilities? It seems to promote a ‘top-down/bottom-up’ level of communication that a strictly ‘top-down’ discipline may not.

I was reminded of your idea for a leaner military and wondered if this familiarity would decrease as the force gets smaller or if the familiarity is the special something that the US has that others don’t.

I believe my need for sleep has made me lose track of where I was going with all this. I had some notion that this somehow related to Republic vs Empire. A military that wants to adapt might be well served by a slight relaxation of military discipline?

= =

Thanks for the kind words.

You ask for more than I can give in a short answer; it is one of the most important questions of the times, or of all times. The Republic is in a critical period, with little holding it together, and among the Legions, while old fashioned patriotism that inspired American armies from the times of Valley Forge is growing thin. Political correctness has corrupted much of the officer corps. Fighting men know what they fight for; those who have not that experience generally have fancies, but they don’t know. But yes, it has a very great deal to do with Republic and Empire.

One of the best and most important books on this is Joseph Maxwell Cameron, The Anatomy of Military Merit. Unfortunately it is long out of print and I don’t know how it can be made available. My copy was copyrighted in 1960. Cameron was born in 1905. I do not know when he died, or who might own the copyright if one is still extant. Books like this would have been available under the Google/Author’s Guild settlement, but the courts threw that out. Cameron has much to say about the place of discipline.

Genuine discipline is related to formal discipline, just as ceremonies like standing retreat and military parades have relationships with genuine discipline but they are hardly the same thing. The art of subordinating the unmatched power of the military to the Republic is one of the dread secrets, and it is being lost to the same forces what allowed a mortal enemy of the Republic to become a promoted officer who could shoot down as enemies those who were his patients and comrades. “Cracking down” doesn’t solve that problem.

It is also important to note that Legions and Constabularies are not the same force, and require different disciplines.

= = = = = = =

Esther Dyson video interview on the future of space travel.

<http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/08/esther-dyson-space/>

Roland Dobbins

= = = = = = = =

Letter from England

Since you’re now exploring WordPress, I decided it was time for me to get on the train. I had been running a vanilla-flavoured WordPress blog for a couple of years, but with little content to see what the hackers would do to it. During last week, I moved my old blog to it <http://crowan-scat.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw/ViewFromEngland/>, and in the process learned quite a bit about WordPress. CJ Cherryh suggested Atahualpa or Constructor, and I found I prefered Atahualpa. She also suggested enlarging the avatars. To set up the tag cloud took a bit of doing. I eventually decided to use Better Tag Cloud which allowed me to set the separator between tags to a space. I also decided to use Faster Image Insert to allow me to upload my photo galleries more quickly.

The Independent looks at American politics: <http://tinyurl.com/6dkfwgr>

UK universities finally must publish their entrance requirements: <http://tinyurl.com/6yrpxjj>. They also may abandon their obsolete honours degree-classification system. <http://tinyurl.com/5tn2fad>

Ongoing debt crisis: <http://tinyurl.com/6zpz7da> <http://tinyurl.com/6cruz8s>

Upcoming near miss by (very small) asteroid: <http://tinyurl.com/6kosp4m>. This one will be approaching closer than our cloud of geostationary satellites.

Tyrannosaurs hunted in packs: <http://tinyurl.com/5rbksfn>

—

"We do not understand how a country,… can produce people who seem to be acting without thinking, let alone making serious efforts to investigate the consequences of their actions." (Mary Evans in the Times Higher Education)

Harry Erwin

= = = = = = = = = =

Canadian Meteorite Has All the Building Blocks for Life.

<http://io9.com/5810426/canadian-meteorite-has-all-the-building-blocks-for-life>

—

Roland Dobbins

= = = = = = = = = = =

Subject: School teacher arrested

A public school teacher was arrested today at John F.

Kennedy

International airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a compass, a slide-rule and a calculator. At a morning press conference, Attorney General Eric Holder said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement.

He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

‘Al-Gebra is a problem for us’, the Attorney General said. ‘They derive solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in search of absolute values.’ They use secret code names like ‘X’ and ‘Y’

and refer to themselves as ‘unknowns’, but we have determined that they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, ‘There are

3 sides to every triangle’.

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Obama said, ‘If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, he would have given us more fingers and toes.’ White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the President – It is believed that another Nobel Prize will follow.

= =

Now that’s bitter!

= = = = = = = = = =

New VTOL design –

Hi Jerry!

Here’s an interesting new design in VTOL aircraft.

http://www.gizmag.com/d-dalus-uav-design/18972/

Thanks for doing all you do so we don’t have to!

E.C. "Stan" Field

= = = = = = = = = = =

What we might want in Afghanistan

Dr. Pournelle,

One comment on your idea that there is nothing Afghanistan makes or has that we need.

There are substantial deposits of LITHIUM and other rare-earth’s that are going to become essential to the long term construction of modern electrical infrastructure. Right now CHINA ( the red menace we have turned into a friend, why?) owns or

controls access to 95% of the raw LITHIUM resources currently known. They are building a road into Afghanistan to begin development of those assets once we are gone. I suspect they are one "empire" that might just be able to do what

no one else has done- conquer the area.

On another note- have you ever looked at the potential of the LFTR ( Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) technology to power the US? IF we would get off our butts and build a few of these power plants things might just turn around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_724593

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUeBSoEnRk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8

Best regards,

Paul R. Cole

Of course there are metals in Afghanistan, but that is a very long way from the United States. We can easily get oil out of Iraq, but we don’t have the will: do you really believe that we will fight China and Russia and Pakistan over Afghan minerals? It would be cheaper to go to the Moon for them.

= = = = = = = =

They don’t even know they are wicked.

Greetings, Dr. P

I was re-reading some of L. Frank Baum’s works, and this struck me as relevant:

A curious thing about Ugu the Shoemaker was that he didn’t suspect in the least that he was wicked. He wanted to be powerful and great, and he hoped to make himself master of all the Land of Oz that he might compel everyone in that fairy country to obey him, His ambition blinded him to the rights of others, and he imagined anyone else would act just as he did if anyone else happened to be as clever as himself.

Sound familiar?

Familiar indeed, alas.

= = = = = = = =

Waves of Political Violence

Regarding the popular actions from Cairo to Kuala Lumpur

I am minded of John Lukacs’ book The Passing of the Modern Age, in which he discussed how Popular Sovereignty had been displacing the State as the basis of authority, so that even tyrants felt the need to proclaim themselves the embodiment of the People’s Will. Both Mussolini and Hitler based their authority on being the Leader of a Folk and not the Head of a State. In the course of it, he mentioned that the increasing unwillingness of States to order the guns and fire on their people would eventually tip over into mass actions which States would feel helpless to address. "How the greatest States, having accumulated unequaled powers, suddenly have found that they are becoming powerless." He foresaw large groups of people simply "sloshing across the borders" with no one to stop them, and a breakdown in State authority. All very prescient for a book written in 1970. Surely there must be a middle ground between the current impotence and Napoleon’s "whiff o grapeshot." Or must there? If 99.9% of the people are content to stay quietly at home, but 0.1% realize that the government dare not give them a whiff of the grape, what will ensue?

MikeF

A Republic need not fear this sort of thing; but we now live in a different world. Have you noted that the SEIU members always get paid no matter what? The way to balance a budget is always to increase revenue, or so it seems; the inspectors of bunny rabbit licenses will be paid. That continues until — until what?

= = = = = = = = =

If Iran can seal its border, why can’t we?

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/iran/articles/20110707.aspx

"July 2, 2011: The government announced that 90 percent of its 1,800kilometer long eastern border has been sealed. The remaining portion, in the southeast along the Pakistani frontier, would be sealed in three years. This effort began in the early 1990s, as part of an effort to keep Afghan opium and heroin from getting in. Nearly 4,000 police and Revolutionary Guards have been killed since then, either by Afghan smugglers bringing drugs in, or shooting at those building the fence that has been built along the border. But the drugs still get in, as Iran has over two million addicts. The media and street chatter is full of stories about the tragic impact of the Afghan opiates. On the plus side, a lot of young people who would be out in the streets trying to change the government, instead get high."

So they can afford it and we can’t?

Ed

That’s about the size of it. It’s a matter of will.

= = = = = = = =

Copyright Re-Education? Yikes!

Oh my Lord – now the movie studios and major ISP’s, like AT&T, have decided that they can force customers to attend re-education sessions about copyrights. Well, maybe that is a little bit of an unfair description, but not much.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/235261/isps_fight_piracy_meet_the_six_strikes.html

ISPs Fight Piracy: Meet the Six Strikes

By Ian Paul <http://www.pcworld.com/author/Ian-Paul> , PCWorld http://www.pcworld.com/ Jul 8, 2011 7:30 AM

The entertainment industry and major U.S. Internet Service Providers have concocted a new "six strikes" plan http://www.pcworld.com/article/235253/copyright_cops_team_with_isps_to_crack_down_on_music_movie_pirates.html?tk=rel_news to combat, educate and punish people sharing copyrighted files online. Major entertainment companies including EMI, Sony Music, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Music, Universal Studios, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Music, and Warner Bros. are betting that the new process could reduce illegal file sharing by as much as 70 percent.

The new plan was announced Thursday under the banner of the newly formed Center For Copyright Information http://www.copyrightinformation.org/ . The agreement is relatively close to rumors about a new antipiracy plan http://www.pcworld.com/article/230954/isps_may_join_fight_against_piracy.html?tk=rel_news that were circulating in late June.

Based on CFCI guidelines, online pirates who persist in sharing copyrighted music, movies and television episodes will be sent a series of six increasingly severe alerts from their ISP. The alerts ultimately include punishments such as bandwidth throttling, temporary suspension of service, and copyright reeducation. ISPs signed up for the plan include AT&T, Cablevision Comcast Time Warner, and Verizon. Victoria Espinel, U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, expressed support for the plan on The White House blog http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/07/07/working-together-stop-internet-piracy .

= = = = = = = = = =

Migration patterns

You might find this interesting:

http://www.peoplemov.in/#!

—

Tim of Angle

= = = = = = = = =