Daily Archives: Mar 5, 2012

Mail 716 Monday, March 05, 2012

The contraception controversy.

Warthogs

The Screwtape Letters

Birth control for all

Dear Dr Pournelle,

In one of your posts you ask why federal government should provide birth control to all, and why citizens should pay for it (I assume via tax).

My short answer is: freedom, perhaps.

My reasoning goes thus:

When you add more gas molecules to a container, all molecules have less space to move, assuming they cannot escape. Similarly, the more people occupy earth, the less freedom each one has, and the harder it is going to be to obtain essentials to live.

Humanity has 2 options: expand into space, or limit numbers of people.

Expanding into space is the best option, since additional sources of elements we need for survival can be obtained, limitless (in a human sense) quantities of energy is available, and eventually, we can even emigrate into space. But our leaders are too stupid to realize this.

The second is to limit uncontrolled human expansion on earth, so that the people who are born, are also free. Not all births should be prevented, but say all beyond 3 children per family.

This last solution is less than optimum, because it needs to be enforced all over earth, and this would be either very hard, or impossible.

Why this is a government responsibility? Because they have the responsibility to ensure the continued survival of the whole nation, not only a few individuals. I know that nature will take care of overpopulation in its own way, whether by starvation, floods, earthquakes, wars, illness, etc., but surely "voluntary" limits are more compassionate?

I enjoy your dayjournal very much, and you have been a great influence on my own philosophy on life. I am a current subscriber, but would also like to thank you in words. Hope your health is better.

Respectfully,

Chris

Chris Els

When I was an undergraduate, the looming overpopulation of the Earth was probably my most ardent concern, and the opposition to birth control was one of my principal reasons for leaving the Catholic Church. I was raised a Unitarian, and converted to the Roman church in high school, influenced by but certainly not pressured by the Christian Brothers who taught there.

I later encountered William Vogt, whose book Road to Survival was my introduction to Malthusian principles – we didn’t get much of that at Christian Brothers, but I can hardly fault them because I don’t know anywhere else that they taught that sort of thing in high school. Vogt was an ecologist, and a very good writer, and his depictions of an Earth denuded of species other than humans, all of them living in or headed for squalor, were stark and convincing. I particularly recall him writing about the Biblical injunction:

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Did that really mean that we were to exterminate and replace them? And for some reason I remember well Vogt’s challenge that man has no more right to live than a canvasback duck. It was a challenging question: we will choose the right answer in all particular cases, but the general answer is more difficult. After all, doesn’t the command to be fruitful and multiply imply that at some point the job will be done?

When I got to the State University of Iowa in Iowa City I sought to take a class in ecology, largely because of my reading of Vogt when younger. “Ecology” was a buzz word among my contemporaries, and many people claimed to be ecologists. I discovered that while there was a simple minded class called ‘ecology’, the actual class was advanced and had as a prerequisite an understanding of differential equations. I managed to convince the professor that I had such an understanding (although I wouldn’t take that in the math department for another few years), and I learned a lot from the Ecology class. Most of what I learned was how little we understood, and how difficult modeling is when there are a number of variables to account for.

When I returned to religion I was still troubled about contraception and spent a number of years as a high church Anglican, with two critical differences between what I believed and what Rome taught, namely that the Episcopal church was a legitimate heir of the Faith through the Apostolic Succession (Rome now accepts that), and contraception. When some years later I returned to the Roman church I kept, I fear, my reservations about the Church’s position on birth control. In practice it makes no difference to my behavior.

I say all this because I well understand your position.

As to limiting the number of people in the world, do note that population counts. A nation that restricts its population is not likely to be sufficiently powerful to impose those restrictions on everyone else. I leave out the morality of that imposition; for the moment it’s enough to establish that we can’t do it. The only real way we could limit the population growth of India, Pakistan, China, and much of Africa would be through wars of deliberate extermination, and whether or not we were successful in that endeavor we would no longer be the United States of America.

Of course we can try to limit our own population growth while building the splendid city on a hill, a shining monument, an example for the rest to follow – as indeed Western Civilization has been since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. As you can easily find from A Farewell to Alms, for most of history most of mankind has been condemned by Malthusian population growth to what we would today consider intolerable poverty for anyone. Even in the most prosperous Western societies most of the population labored hard during daylight hours for six days a week (holidays excepted – perhaps another 20 depending on the country); had little to no health care (not that this was as important as now; until antibiotics physicians were not much better than grandmothers at treating the sick, and until Pasteur and Semmelweis surgeons were often a greater danger than just being left alone); had one change of clothing; ate one meal a day and that mostly starches; and generally lived lives that the most impoverished in the United States would find intolerable. And that is about 90% of the population for thousands of years. The novels of Jane Austen show the splendor of life among the elite but once in a while slip in scenes of what was going on outside the great manors, and why being taken into the manor servants hall was considered a good thing to have happen to your children.

For nearly two centuries the United States has escaped from that trap. The escape was due at first to freedom combined with the Frontier, nearly limitless land to be had for hard work, land on which one might labor all ones life and pass on to the next generation a life much better than yours; and to the growth of technology, which made a few able to produce goods to be consumed by the many. Freedom, new land, and technology broke the iron rule of Malthus, and even as I found Vogt persuasive I could see that for parts of the world – particularly the part I lived in – he wasn’t strictly accurate. We had population growth along with a rising standard of living for everyone.

The may no longer be true. There are those who say those heady days when a rising tide floated all boats and even common laborers could look forward to being part of the middle class, and send their children to college have come to an end. We have had our golden age, and the best we can hope for now is to spread the wealth around a bit, but will never be able to make everyone rich.

But this is not Lake Wobegon, and we have run up against the brutal fact that much of our population is not productive. They may be ‘middle class’ as in Aristotle’s definition, possessing the goods of fortune in moderation, but how they came by that possession is important: to larger and larger numbers, their possessions have not been earned, but given to them by government. This is not a formula for producing a land of the free. Moreover, as the many threaten the few, as the masses threaten the rich, the rich are not without recourse. We all remember the days of the French Revolution, or the early days of the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, but the results were not what the revolutionaries expected. They never are. The French were fortunate to get Bonaparte. The Russians got Stalin.

I am certainly not in favor of using government to restrict access to birth control. Some of the slogans now put forward in this debate come from that era – keep your rosary off of my ovary – but many are irrelevant now. In my day boys could walk to the back of the drugstore, ask for a male clerk, and stutteringly ask to be sold condoms. I know because I did it once, not that possession of the item did me either harm or good since it was never used. In those days girls had every right to expect that boys provide the contraceptives, although most of the girls of my social class relied on total abstinence and avoiding the occasion of sin. Where I grew up there were girls you could sleep with and girls you could marry, and they were not the same girls, and in the case of myself and my geeky friends it didn’t matter how much time you spent looking for the girls you could sleep with, because you could never find any. Ah well. It’s all different now. For one thing, condoms are dispensed from machines in public wash rooms as well as on display in the drug stores (and at least one grocery store).

So: is it in the interest of the United States to prevent unwanted conception among those who can be persuaded to use contraception? I recall once Larry Niven telling Isaac Asimov, who was ardently in favor of limiting population, that every time Isaac persuaded someone to adopt his view the IQ of the earth went down. Niven as usual was being humorous but also as usual with Niven there was a truth under the humor.

What I am sure of is that requiring Roman Catholic institutions to provide and pay for contraception is a very dangerous incursion into freedom of religion. Sometimes such incursions are necessary, but generally they are justified as protection of minors: I have no right to demand that you get a tetanus shot or a blood transfusion, but I assert the right to require you to allow your children to get that medical treatment. Religious freedom is after all a freedom, and when the state is allowed to squelch one freedom it is one step closer to ridding itself of the nuisance of all the others. How much easier government would be for bureaucrats if it were not for all those pesky rights that people have!

You apparently assert that to defend freedom we must impose some kind of population growth control; at the very least it is to our benefit that we tax everyone regardless of conscience in order to provide free contraceptives to anyone who wants it; and this is the justification for the government’s position in the Georgetown case.

I would say that your case is not proven: that I see no indisputable link between the availability of free contraception to women students in Georgetown and our future prosperity, while I do see a direct and indisputable link between requiring all to pay for that provision and the loss of some part of religious freedom.

= = = = = = = =

birth control

Jerry

30 years ago when I got married I remember my wife commenting about our, then, insurance policy not covering birth control and what a financially foolish policy it was. Which is cheaper 10/15 years of birth control or one unplanned birth with 10 years of insurance claims on all the standard medical claims for a growing child.

Bill

Bill Tims

Which still does not tell me why it is my obligation, rather than yours, to pay for it.

I am not quarreling with the States rights to impose compulsory medical insurance on those resident in the state. I am stating that the Constitution gives no such power to the Federal government. Of course the real problem started with the Feds ‘giving’ money to the states to support hospitals, whereupon the Federal Courts decided that this gave them the power to require that hospitals admit everyone who came to them without regard to their ability to pay. This closed many hospital emergency rooms and closes more every year, since hosts of people including illegal immigrants simply use the emergency room as a free clinic. It takes a very vigorous and wealthy hospital system to withstand that assault, and there still has to be a vigorous triage treatment to weed out those who do not need the services of expensive emergency room physicians.

Unexpected pregnancy certainly can be a burden. I can tell you many such stories. The burden is usually more on women than men, too, since the practical result is generally to remove the mother from income earning during the infancy of the child. The men have to work harder, and sometimes both mother and father have to drop out of school, assuming the father can be found. Of course now the tendency is to impose support of the child on taxpayers, and requiring the father to pay child support is not so much in favor. Public support of new children works in a vigorous economy, but when the economy falters it makes for problems. Our Great Recession has exposed that.

The fact remains that the Federal Government has not the Constitutional power to require that you and I pay for someone else’s insurance against pregnancy. This is not a religious issue but one of Constitutional power.

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Sandra Fluke and public obligations

RE: Sandra Fluke and public obligations

Jerry,

Google is your friend; use it, please, o’ greater touter of the internet. There are a number of women’s health issues that are

quite effectively treated with oral contraceptives; they are not ONLY prescribed for birth control. There are anywhere from over

4,000,000 to over 12,000,000 women in this country who are affected by some of the more severe of such issues. For such women, oral

contraceptives are not about birth control. Practicing virginity is of absolutely no benefit regarding such women’s health issues.

If one includes all of the non-birth control medical uses for oral contraceptives for women, those numbers are much higher.

It ain’t all about having sex. It certainly is not even remotely about religion, though the GOP is straining mightily to try make

it seem that way; pushing a car uphill with a rope. Get a grip. As for where the government got the right, is was duly passed by congress and signed into law by the president. Surely you’ve heard about it.

For any particular activity of the government, there are groups large and small who are vehemently opposed for any number of reasons

near and dear to them. Yet their tax dollars help pay for these very activities. Where does the government get the right to do

these things? If you look at the voter turnout for any given election, whether local, state or federal, more often than not less

than 20% to 25% of eligible voters give the government that right.

Bruce

I answered:

Sandra Fluke and public obligations

Fine. You then agree that you have an obligation to pay for someone else’s health care, and in some cases contraceptive pills are important in curing some other problem. You must also pay for their chemotherapy. But if they take contraceptive pills as a guard against pregnancy is that not fundamentally different? Why are you obliged to pay for someone else’s birth control, even if you admit some obligation to pay for their general health care?

Jerry Pournelle

I’m obliged because I’m an American citizen and taxpayer, and that’s the law, written by the congress and signed by the president. It’s the same obligation I have to pay for military hardware and salaries (even if I were a steadfast conscientious objector, which I am not). Do you suppose there are some members of the military using their salary to pay for things to which I have strong objections? Following your logic, why then am I obligated to pay for military personnel salaries if they are not going to spend it the way I want them to spend it? Good Heavens! They might even be paying for oral contraceptives with my money!

This is not the America in which you grew up; it is not the America in which I grew up. But I never expected America to stay static and Norman Rockwellian; I’ve expected change throughout my life, and still do.

And you and I and everyone who has insurance or the wherewithal to pay for their own health care have been paying for someone else’s health care for some number of years, now. It’s called pass-through; prices are set by total care provided. Those who can pay are charged enough to cover the cost of caring for those who can’t pay. I see it rather simply; I’m going to pay for the health care of others, one way or another. Why is such a simple concept so difficult for so many people to grasp?

Bruce

Which is a pretty good statement of the modern liberal position. If Congress passes it and particularly if Congress passes it and I like it, then that’s that, and the Constitution need not be consulted. We can vote ourselves any largesse we desire, and require someone else to pay for it. That may perhaps lead to places we don’t want to go, but let the good times roll. But as Lady Thatcher observed, at some point you run out of other people’s money. You may then seek to take it from them, but they are richer than you, and they may not be as dumb as you think; and eventually it comes down to who can recruit the strongest forces. Generally those will be the Legions, as the Roman Republic found, and to be at the mercy of the Legions is frightening; to keep order one needs an Emperor. Ave Caesar Imperator.

You will run out of money, you know.

Incidentally I know something of research tools, but thank you for the instruction.

= = = = = =

Re: Sandra Fluke and public obligations

The first problem is that birth control pills have medical uses besides birth control… i.e. there are situations, like treating endometriosis, where preventing pregnancy is a side effect of the desired treatment rather than the desired treatment itself. They are also used for treating lesser problems, like severe menstrual cramping. Personally, I can’t see any argument regarding treating a significant medical condition, and I can’t see any respectful way for a religious institution to inject itself into a conversation between a doctor and patient about how much it really hurts, and is that enough to allow you to treat this particular problem.

The second problem is that preventing pregnancy is cheaper for an insurance provider than paying for childbirth. As a dollars and cents calculation, will insurance companies save money by providing birth control to X women to prevent Y pregnancies? It is a straightforward ratio to figure out which is cheaper, a calculation that has been done by insurance companies, and it is cheaper to prevent the pregnancies. That means I’m saving money for myself in paying for insurance that provides contraception to women.

The third problem is that pregnancy is the single most obvious condition where the burden is shared unequally between male and female. Suggesting abstinence is fine, but the consequences of failure to meet that goal fall pretty heavily on one side of the fence.

Speaking only for myself, I’d just as soon let all the women in the country vote on it and butt out of whatever they decided. Just guessing from the polls on women and use of contraceptives, I think the likely result of such a vote would be in favor of coverage.

-Fred Stevens

I think you have missed the point here. I don’t question the right of the states to impose that kind of law and solution; after all the States had and by my reckoning still ought to have the right to establish a church. I question the constitutional authority of the Federal government to do that. I believe the Constitution trumps economic arguments. If it doesn’t it won’t be much of a limit on government.

As to “birth control” pills as treatment for actual disorders requiring them, Georgetown’s insurance policy already covers those and has done so for a decade. It is only contraception that is against the principles of the Jesuits who run this nearly secular law school.

= = = = = = = =

Sandra

Jerry,

The flare-up this week came from Rush Limbaugh calling this young woman a slut and a prostitute for daring to suggest that contraception being covered by health care. If he had kept his mouth shut, this story would have died and wouldn’t have gotten any coverage at all. What he did was keep the issue alive after the president came up with a reasonable compromise for those institutions who believe that their religion doesn’t allow them to provide coverage.

Its time that we get past the idea of universal health care. Every industrialized, forward looking country has some type of universal coverage and it shows in their health statistics. The US if falling way behind in infant mortality, life-span and general health. This impacts us economically, and reduces our ability to compete.

I believe that government requirements should not be adjusted or changed due to religions. What Rick Santorum is calling for is as close to a "caliphate" as he have ever seen in this country. From his comments on Kennedy to Rick’s mandating the ability of states to make contraception illegal, this man has dangerous and "rearward" looking ideas. This is not just a made-up issue around the "elite media" (whatever that term means) as Gingrich said this morning on "Meet the Press." This is an issue for all voters to consider and make an independent decision.

Alex

p.s. Miss Chaos Manor Reviews — hope you are able to get back to that soon.

Well, not everyone considers nationalized medicine a settled matter. I for one would prefer to see some more state implementations. I’ve seen just how horribly wrong a nationalized system can go. Now admittedly, if there were some way to make everything work for everyone as smoothly as Kaiser has here in Los Angeles, I would be interested, but my suspicion is that meddling will ruin what we have without making anything much better. At my age I can’t wait several days for medical attention.

As to whether or not government requirements should be adjusted or changed due to religious beliefs, I think you would find few among the founders, including the Deists and atheists, who would agree with you. Of course if the Constitution means whatever the courts say and not what was agreed to in the Constitution that is of no matter.

Thanks for the kind words. I miss Chaos Manor Reviews, and the good news is that I am feeling more like being up to resuming it.

= = = = = = = = = =

cost of contraception

Hi Jerry-

Surely, you are aware that the net cost of contraception to the insurer is negative. Pregnancy and its complications are expensive; these costs more than offset the cost of contraception. The entire approach taken by conservatives on this issue seems brain-dead. The arguments about sexual mores or religious freedom are not compelling to most people. Here are some winning arguments:

1. The Federal government has no legitimate role in mandating requirements for health insurance (outside of the district and perhaps the military). There does not seem to be any reason why the individual states could mandate health care, if that is way the citizenry votes.

2. The high cost of contraceptives is largely due to legal liability and regulation. Make contraceptives available over the counter, reduce the regulatory burden of the FDA, remove contraception from health plans, and limit the legal liability of manufacturers and the cost of contraception will drop to less than $50/year for most women.

3. Employer "provided" healthcare is an historical accident. Repeal the corporate income tax and remove whatever other incentives there are for employers to provide health insurance to their employees. This will make transparent the real cost of health insurance, which is shockingly high.

Rush Limbaugh demonstrates (once again) that he is a buffoon.

This election will almost certainly go Democratic. The Republicans seem to be unable to remove their heads from their asses.

That is most unfortunate, as this is a pivotal election…

-Steve=

I don’t disagree much with your main points. I do not accept the conclusions that follow. Limbaugh is an entertainer and highly successful at doing what many others attempt unsuccessfully. He works very hard, and he has organized his thoughts and his staff well.

I don’t bet on elections anymore, but presuming that it is a fair election I would think it probable that it will go Republican with some surprises, much as 2010 did. I think Obama is deeply in trouble. He has lost the charismatic appeal and is no longer the chosen one who will astonish us with his accomplishments. Yes WE CAN! Can what?

Screwtape Letters

"Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it."

How did C.S. Lewis so accurately describe Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert sixty years before either of them got started?

—

Mike T. Powers

C. S. Lewis did that a lot. Those not familiar with The Screwtape Letters will find many contemporary people, some not born during Lewis’s lifetime, very accurately depicted. Lewis wrote for his generation, but much of his work belongs to the ages. He was a Christian apologist, often described as ‘Apostle to the skeptics,’ and he took matters of conscience and religion seriously. I expect most of my readers are familiar with his works, either his non-fiction such as Mere Christianity , or his juvenile fiction notably the Narnia series, or his adult works such as That Hideous Strength which remains relevant despite its years. I also found his allegorical work Pilgrim’s Regress strangely compelling. Lewis was an adult convert to Christianity after a fairly long period of skepticism, and some brushes with paganism. For those new to Lewis, I suggest The Great Divorce as an entertaining start.

Bunny Inspectors Without Borders

Just in case you were wondering, it isn’t only America that has bunny inspectors and the Ministry Of Fish Licensing.

http://blogs.catster.com/kitty-news-network/2012/03/05/oh-no-neko-cat-cafes-facing-hiss-worthy-new-law/

(Excerpt)

For years, cat cafés have been an oasis of calm in the hectic life of Tokyo’s residents. They allow frazzled workers to stop by and drop their day’s tensions and enjoy a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever. People who live in the city of 13 million often face strict regulations that forbid cats in many apartment buildings, so the cafés also allow Tokyo cat lovers to get their feline fix.

But now, the cafés may be forced to close their doors before most city residents even get out of work.

A new revision to Japan’s Animal Protection Law, due to go into effect on June 1, will put a curfew on the public display of cats and dogs.

The law is targeted toward late-night pet shops, which often sell cats and dogs 24 hours a day, keeping them under bright lights that never shut off. But the cat cafés are collateral damage in the fight to stop the real animal abusers.

The cafés would only be allowed to be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Hiromi Kawase, the owner of one of Tokyo’s cat cafés, says she doesn’t keep her establishment open all night. But she does stay open until 10 p.m. and finds that many of her customers don’t even get there until 8 – the end of the workday for most of Tokyo’s residents.

(I’m sure that if you asked any of the officials involved, they’d explain that this *totally* wasn’t their intent and they *totally* support the idea of cat cafes and they *totally* will work as hard as possible to sort all this out and they have high confidence that they can deal with all of the issues involved sometime in the next twelve to eighteen months and they understand that this might cause some minor, *extremely* minor inconvenience for business owners but they ask for our understanding and support because after all they’re just working on behalf of defenseless animals.)

—

Mike T. Powers

Japan can be a complete Iron Law Bureaucracy but sometimes sanity creeps in. It will be interesting to follow this story.

"Go peacefully. It’s following government’s orders."

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2109756/The-Execution-Factor-Interviews-death-row-Chinas-new-TV-hit.html>

—

Roland Dobbins

And if 2,000 executions a year and these interviews don’t do the job, perhaps they’ll let her film the executions as they happen.

Peaceful thoughts from Islam for today

Read Sura 22 verses 19-21. Read on if you want more context.

Pickthal:

19: These twain (the believers and the disbelievers) are two opponents who contend concerning their Lord. But as for those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them; boiling fluid will be poured down on their heads,

20: Whereby that which is in their bellies, and their skins too, will be melted;

21: And for them are hooked rods of iron.

These are instructions for peaceful egalitarian Muslims as well as any others.

Is it any wonder there are so few peaceful Muslims speaking up when this is what they are taught?

http://www.cmje.org/religious-texts/quran/verses/022-qmt.php#022.019

{^_^}

Oath of Fealty – Kindle version

Hello, Dr. Pournelle.

I followed the link in your post from February 24, 2012, 11:35 pm PST ("If you haven’t read Oath of Fealty, the paperback edition is available, and there’s a Kindle edition. It was a best seller in its time, and it’s still very readable") to the Kindle edition available on Amazon and was somewhat surprised at the $6.30 price tag. I was even more surprised to learn that I could purchase a new, paperback copy of the book from several different Amazon-affiliated suppliers for under $5.00 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1416555161/ref=tmm_mmp_new_olp_0/178-8468700-4822264?ie=UTF8&condition=new). I completely understand that pricing is outside your control but an electronic edition of a book written in an electronic form (S-100 using Electric Pencil, I believe you said), published electronically, distributed electronically and consumed electronically that costs substantially (percentage-wise) more than its paper equivalent I found sad, if slightly amusing. I purchased the Kindle version anyway; a Niven/Pournelle offering not in my library is rare 🙂 We can at least hope the paper version was printed on recycled paper. I do yet cling to a slowly dissipating hope that the highly touted electronic office of the late 1980’s will arrive sometime before my last days on Starship Earth…

Michael

Michael Tanner

Thanks for the kind words. Yes, the paper edition of the book remains in print, although I think most of those have already been written off by the publisher. Oath probably reads a little better in paper because of the complex typography. I don’t know how the Kindle price was determined.

FYI.

Subj: It’s starting

I’ve just heard on the qt that ammo demand is currently outstripping production and that well before fall shortages are expected to be more significant than they were in 2009. Specific concern was raised for all common calibers of pistol ammo, .223/5.56×45,.308/7.62×51, and .30-06.

The recommendation is to and buy ahead, particularly if you use .380 Auto (recalling 2009).

Warthogs

Combined Arms

I read your comments at the A-10 and which branch should ‘own’ it with great interest. Having spent 6+ plus years in the US Air Force, two of them at Myrtle Beach AFB when it hosted a Wing of A-10s, and 13+ years in the US Army, working in plans and operations, you are spot on about who should be running the A-10.

And for those who believe this is a bad idea, I suggest you speak with anyone in the United States Marine Corps. Commanders at Marine Expeditionary Brigade level (a two star command) own their own aircraft group and use them as needed to support the mission assigned. The aviation group provides offensive air support, assault support, electronic warfare, control of aircraft and missiles, anti-air warfare and Aerial Reconnaissance. They do rely on the USN and USAF to control the airspace they fight in, although Marines are part of that mission as well (at least on the Navy side).

Believe me, during all the various nights I spent at a G3 shop working on plans for operations, I often wished we has a string on a squadron of A-10s. Small, ugly and the best friend a grunt could ever have.

Hope you’re doing well.

Ed Green

Thanks. [Sergeant Green, USA Ret., is an old friend.]

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Why Generals hate the A-10

It actually goes deeper than what the article states. If you ask any pilot what the AF mission is he will say it is to defeat enemy fighter pilots in the air. Naturally the A-10 has no part of that mission. If you ask a fighter pilot if he is tasked to support ground troops he will say yeah we train for that after we finish training for defeating enemy fighter pilots in the air; but, there is rarely, if any, money in the budget to do that.

That is the core of the problem. It is the same philosophy as when the Brits were retreating in France the RAF loaded up their planes with the spare pilots and left the mechanics, fuelers, munition loaders behind to rot. So when they set up shop the next time they couldn’t get into the air.

craig valentine

So long as the A-10 exists and the Air National Guard and reserves are trained to use it, it will be useful and sometimes decisive, but if it were integrated better with the ground forces we would develop much more effective doctrines for its use. Air superiority belongs to the Air Force, but not support of the field army.

Hot Fudge Sundae Falls on Friday next February

HOT FUDGE FRIDAY 15 FEBRUARY 2013 or is it…

asteroid 2012 DA14

http://rt.com/news/paint-asteroid-earth-nasa-767/

Article linked on DrudgeReport.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2012da14.html

Note that 15 February 2013 approach not currently shown on NEOs list

There are multiple items in the blogosphere referencing the asteroid variably as 60 – 100 m in diamter, stating that the closest approach on Feb 2013 is about Geosynch altitude (a factor of 4 larger than the median distances shown for future approaches on the NEO page). The NEO page indicates an impact energy in the vicinity of 2 MT. This is correctly noted as approximating the Tunguska event.

This has NOT been picked up by mainstream domestic news media other than Drudge. There are numerous foreign language reports searching "asteroid 2012 DA14" on google news but none I recognize as foreign mainstream news sources. Some of the articles suggest that NASA has already confirmed near certain impact in 2013.

Bottom Line: 2013 risk is overstated by sensationalists in the blogsophere. Future risk is significant, though the Palmero scale is still fairly low on the object, because perturbations are likely to increase impact risk. But keep an eye on this one.

We will see. Last I heard it was “h-bomb sized” in energy, which would be megatons; nasty but not a dinosaur killer. I suspect it won’t be all that close, but it is well to be watchful. We’ll hear more.

Liberty in Illinois

Yet another decision striking down Illinois’ eavesdropping law which bars citizens from recording police in the public performance of their duties.

"The decision came in the case of Christopher Drew, an artist who was arrested in 2009 for selling art on a Loop street without a permit. Drew was charged with eavesdropping after he used an audio recorder in his pocket to capture his conversations with police during his arrest.

In a statement Friday, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez defended bringing the charges and said her office plans to appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court.

…Illinois’ eavesdropping statute, one of the strictest in the nation, makes it a felony to record any conversation without the consent of all parties. It carries stiffer sentences — of up to 15 years in prison — if a police officer or court official is recorded without his or her knowledge."

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-03-03/news/ct-met-eavesdropping-law-ruling-0303-20120303_1_eavesdropping-statute-police-internal-affairs-investigators-innocent-conduct

-R

Subj: drroyspencer.com

Global Temperature change in February: -0.026 degrees Celsius from January.

Error Code,

Jerry

Don’t you wish you had a book where you could look up the error codes? This:

http://xkcd.com/1024/

I want that book.

Ed

Subject: Direct measurement of temperature

In your column for March 1, you quote a Mr. David Fuhs as stating categorically that there is no direct temperature measurement before 1940. I find this hard to believe, because as far as I know, the Weather Bureau, predecessor to the National Weather Service, has been keeping records ever since it was founded in 1870. Perhaps Mr. Fuhs is referring to the fact that it didn’t become part of the Department of Commerce until 1940, or that earlier records have been discarded. If so, I’d find that to be highly unlikely, considering how zealous any such bureaucracy is at safeguarding its paperwork and I find his way of just throwing out the claim without the slightest evidence suspicious, to say the least. Of course, judging by the rest of what you quote, Mr.

Fuhs to be a denier, not a skeptic, as he seems to believe that it’s not warmer now than it was in 1776. If this is typical of a denier, I can see why the True Believers are so contemptuous of them and so eager to lump the skeptics in with them.

Joe

The problem is the accuracy of the measures before we had automatic recording, and even after when the environment of the sensor changed dramatically. We have estimates of temperature for the past hundred years that I would trust to within a couple of degrees, and I am willing to believe that our proxies give us a good general estimate of temperatures over centuries; but I do not believe that inferences requiring 1/10 degree accuracy are reliable.