August 2012 – Page 2 – Chaos Manor

Neil Armstrong, RIP. We’ll be back.

By Jerry Pournelle | Aug 25, 2012 - 6:04 pm | Updated: August 25, 2012 - 10:51 pm | View

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View 738 Saturday, August 25, 2012

Neil Armstrong, RIP

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, –and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr

People said things like that when I was growing up, and all the astronauts knew it in the old days at Edwards. I suppose they still know that poem at the USAF Academy, but perhaps not; but I have heard it recited by X-15 pilots at Pancho’s after a day of miracles, and no one laughed. And I am sure that Neil Armstrong knew it. Test pilots were tough guys with the right stuff, but all of them I knew had a romantic streak.

And of course they all had the right stuff, and they knew it, and they knew that Armstrong had more of it than most. During the Apollo Lander Simulation flight – the trainer was dubbed the flying bedstead with good reason – in Arizona the computers glitched or the gyros tumbled so that the platform tumbled ninety degrees. If Armstrong had ejected with it in that attitude he would not have achieved enough altitude to allow the parachute to open. He kept his nerve and slowly rotated the platform as it fell, and when the angle was right – about 45 degrees I am told, I wasn’t there – ejected. Everything worked and he landed without injury. They’ve calculated that he had about three seconds to spare.

The computers overloaded during the Apollo 11 landings, and Armstrong came through again. This time he had twenty seconds of fuel to spare. The right stuff came through. The Eagle landed as the world watched, and the world would never be the same. Those of us who had a part in that can be sure of that. When I was growing up I knew from the first day I read Willy Ley’s book that I would live to see the first man on the Moon. I had not expected to outlive him, but Mankind’s conquest of space is not over. We’ll be back.

In September, 1962, President John F. Kennedy said that within the decade we would put a man on the moon and bring him home. We would do it because we choose to do it. I was part of the space program and I had my doubts. I kept my reservations secret, but the astronauts never had any. They were sure that America could do it.

We chose to go to the Moon in 1962, and seven years after making the choice we heard “Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” With 1962 technology. With primitive computers, unreliable rocket motors, with little understanding of the Lunar surface and less understanding of space weather. What is it that we cannot do now? But we must choose to do it.

From a statement by the Armstrong family:

“While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his
remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people
around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be
willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a
cause greater than themselves.

“For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple
request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty,
and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon
smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."

There’s a waxing half Moon out there tonight.

Tom Brosz reminds me that I may outlive the last man on the Moon as well as the first. Eugene Cernan, the last man to stand on the Moon, is 78. Younger than me, but not by much.

A mixed bag: metaphors, ammunition, space weather, Rothschild and the Euro, and other matters

By Jerry Pournelle | Aug 22, 2012 - 11:31 pm | Updated: August 23, 2012 - 3:56 pm | Mail

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Mail 738 Wednesday, August 22, 2012

They Have "Wasteful" Government in Australia, Too –

Dr. Pournelle,

The Australian government has made a $45,000 grant for investigating turning dog poo into a renewable energy source. The article is

from the Watt’s Up With That? web site.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/19/climate-craziness-of-the-week-poo-power-from-your-dog/

The silly season knows no boundaries.

Jay Smith

Seems like a trivial amount of money. What does it cost to deal with dog poop now? S C Edison at one time wanted to experiment with the waste output of Oceanside to see if you could get enough energy from it to offset some of the cost of sewage processing, but the state regulators wouldn’t let them use ratepayer money for that experiment.

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

Dr. Pournelle,

Fair enough. I wasn’t aware of the other forays into extracting energy from waste. I’m dubious there is any real benefit to be found from these processes. I suppose spending $45,000 to find out one way or another isn’t a horrible use of taxpayer money.

Thanks for the response.

Jay Smith

A retraction on the loss of metaphors

Dr. Pournelle,

I wrote you sometime back bemoaning the loss, somewhat tounge-in-cheek, of some of our cultural metaphors to political correctness. You’d used the term "tar baby," and I’d run into a host of younger co-workers that particular week who didn’t understand the term, had never heard of Brer Rabbit, and who didn’t even know that Disney had ever considered producing anything as blatently racist (in modern terms) as "Song of the South."

I’ve got to take that all back. Somewhat belatedly, I’m reading Neil Gaiman’s _Anansi Boys_, where he correctly re-tells the tar baby story in something close to the original African fairy tale style. Of course, in the story it is Anansi’s children who set up the Tar Man, not Brer Rabbit’s tar baby. In the story, it is Anansi himself who gets stuck due to perniciousness and greed.

Of course, most of my co-workers have never heard of Anansi, either, and only no a little mythology, either because of exposure in an elective freshman college course (Gods forbid we teach mythology in high school any more) or via secondary exposure in more shallow fiction.

Gaiman is keeping a lot of the old mythology alive and in context. I guess that we’re really not losing the metaphors so much as having them corrected.

-d

We read the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby in about Fourth Grade in Capleville school in Tennessee, but I guess they don’t do that now.

Subject: Denise Barton of California Files $1.7 Billion Claim Alleging ‘Smart’ Meters Making Her Sick

Yep….the crazy years are upon us. I really think the lawyer who took this lawsuit on should do jail time.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/08/denise-barton-of-california-files-1-7-billion-claim-alleging-smart-meters-making-her-sick/

Tracy

I guess it’s the silly season for lawyers too…

"Allies"

Dear Mr. Pournelle:

Your correspondent "G" raises some interesting points in his note on "Allies," regarding protection of the people. His main argument, that "big government and big business are natural allies", especially deserves consideration.

I’ve long found that to be one of the few persuasive arguments in the rhetoric of the old Anarchist movement; that political and economic powers will naturally enter into collusion, so there’s no point trying to reform either — tear them down. But anarchism is untenable. So where do we go? I’m unwilling to submit to the notion that we’re inevitably to be dominated by Behemoths; and the American experiment of checks and balances seems to me to be the most plausible alternative yet devised.

I agree there will be a strong *tendency* for government to collude with economic power. But it isn’t inevitable; your correspondent cites, appropriately, Theodore Roosevelt. I would like a counterbalance other than government: I don’t see one. In that highly imperfect situation, it seems to me that one reasonable strategy is to support those candidates and political parties which seem *least* in collusion with corporations. Currently, that appears to be liberals. That wasn’t always so. Theodore Roosevelt is clearly a counterexample; Dwight D. Eisenhower is a more recent one.

I return to the question of *power imbalance.* There’s no point talking about preserving freedom unless we can find some way to restrain economic power. I’d like to find some option better than a Hobbesian Leviathan; but I have little patience with any political position which doesn’t see a problem in the growing power of corporations.

As a lesser point, your correspondent argues "Even today little tinhorn states around the world routinely nationalize or blackmail multinational corporations without fear." Routinely? That may be excessive. Nevertheless, it would be odd for him to suggest that the only practical alternative to corporate dominance is Marxist dictatorship… I really, really don’t want to go down that road. We could easily have drifted that direction in the 1930’s, and that should be warning enough.

So here’s where I sit. Marxism, Anarchism, and corporate oligarchy are all intolerable. I’m firmly enough convinced of the doctrine of original sin that I really don’t expect any political approach to these problems to be either flawless or stable. Yes, government intervention is clumsy and will sometimes bite us. Given that we’re working with fallen humans, I would expect no less. There may be alternatives, but I’d expect them to be equally flawed. I’d be interested if your correspondent could list some.

Allan E. Johnson

I have always held the theory that Marx had a great deal of truth in his theory of concentration of power, and that the anti-trust movement in the United States saved this nation from many of the horrid consequences of such concentrations. David McCord Wright, one of my favorite economists, always held that view. I would be very much in favor of reintroducing the trust busters. I was opposed to the persecution of Microsoft because it was ill conceived, but not on principle. I do not like corporate ‘growth’ by buying up the competition, and I certainly believe that any bank that is too big to fail is too big to exist.

I have the same view of government.

But then I have always been for transparency and subsidiarity as general principles. I’ve said all this many times, of course.

Pretty Good: http://de.webfail.at/image/i-am-your-father-win-bild.html

Indeed

Men to Mars

Jerry,

I remember reading a 1996 book called "The Case For Mars" by a NASA engineer called Zubrin. According to my fallible memory Zubrin’s scheme was to use off the shelf Proton rockets to fly a nuclear powered, Victorian technology, chemical plant which would combine the Martian atmosphere with a cargo of hydrogen to make methane, water, and oxygen. Another rocket would carry living quarters and only when this had been accomplished would a crew be sent. It certainly seemed plausible to me as the scheme relied on known technology. Certainly there would be a lot of R&D to make this possible, but essentially it would need no need no new discovery, only improved plumbing. One big plus would be that everything except the crew’s ship could be duplicated at a reasonable cost. On arrival the astronauts would have fuel for exploring and for the return trip, and water and oxygen for life support. At the time it struck me as being no more dangerous than flying a Starfighter.

John Edwards

I have known Zubrin for a long time, and while his scheme looks very plausible, I for one do not know how to get people to Mars alive if there is anything like a solar flare. And I don’t really think we know enough about keeping them alive once there.

I do think we could build a viable Lunar Colony with today’s technology, and we could learn from it about staying alive in the space environment. Moon next. Then Mars.

Space weather is worse than most of us think it is.

Rothschild Bets Against Euro

This is an interesting move by the most powerful family in Europe; perhaps, the most powerful family in the world:

<.>

If the actions of Lord Jacob Rothschild are anything to go by, the long predicted collapse of the Euro may not be far away, with the banking titan placing a $200 million dollar bet against the troubled single currency.

“Lord Rothschild, an elder member of the dynastic Rothschild banking family, has taken the position against the euro through RIT Capital Partners, the 1.9 billion pound investment trust of which he is executive chairman,” reports CNBC.

RIT has upped its short against the Euro from 3 per cent in January to 7 per cent in July.

</>

http://www.infowars.com/lord-rothschild-betting-on-euro-collapse/

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Well, perhaps he knows something…

Why all your correspondents urging the use of hollowpoint ammunition are dead wrong.

Yes, in most cases, hollowpoint rounds do a better job of stopping the target via expansion and the resultant wounding. Yes, hollowpoint rounds are generally safer in terms of through-and-through penetration and resultant collateral damage.

But that’s nothing compared to what a prosecutor a la Trayvon or a civil attorney representing the family of the deceased will do to you in a courtroom.

If you use anything other than full-metal jacket ammo; if you customize your weapon in any way for safer, more accurate handling (Pachmyr grips, integral laser sights, etc.); you will stand accused of being a dangerous, homicidal fanatic just looking for any excuse at all to make your own day by shooting someone, a mad-dog danger to the community who, far from acting in self-defense, went out on the date in question looking for someone to kill in what was at the very least second-degree murder, if not outright pre-planned first-degree homicide.

The facts of the case will be irrelevant. The point that you were acting in self-defense in fear of your life and with no avenue of retreat will be irrelevant. You will be made out to be a kindred spirit to Charles Whitman and Anton Brevik, acting out of various officially-proscribed thoughtcrimes such as racism, sexism, homophobia, religious bias, Republicanism, Christianity, and so forth. They will their best to convict and imprison you, as well as to sue and bankrupt you (the first greatly contributing to the probability of success of the second).

So, it’s far better to be selfish and to forego more secure grips, more accurate sights, and safer ammunition in order to immunize oneself as much as possible against post-self-defense legal assault by distinguished officers of the court, members of the bar, and the larger racial grievance community.

This isn’t speculation; I’ve seen this sort of thing play itself out multiple times. As a result, sensible law enforcement agencies forbid their armed operatives – with exceptions for SWAT-type paramilitaries, who apparently can employ field artillery and air-strikes with impunity – from customizing their weapons in any way, from using anything other than full-metal jacket ammunition, and even from utilizing accessories such as cutaway holsters or under-arm clip carriers.

Roland Dobbins

Philadelphia woman faces $600-a-day fine for feeding needy neighborhood kids

Evidently her crime was not getting permission from the government to help

other people out.after all, that IS the purview of the

government, not the citizens, when you live in a Socialist State.

Subject: Philadelphia woman faces $600-a-day fine for feeding needy

neighborhood kids

Published August 14, 2012

A Pennsylvania woman who offers free lunch every day to low-income children

in her neighborhood faces a $600-a-day fine next summer

if she continues because she did not clear the food giveaway with township

officials.

Angela Prattis donates her time to distribute the meals — supplied by the

Archdiocese of Philadelphia — and adheres to strict

paperwork, like filling out weekly reports and being visited bi-weekly from

a state worker, MyFoxPhilly.com reports. Philadelphia

News, Weather and Sports from WTXF FOX 29 <http://www.myfoxphilly.com/>

"Angela saw it as a way to contribute to the community in a positive way,"

Anne Ayella, a member of the archdiocese, said. "There

was nothing in it for her."

Prattis laughed and said, "I don’t make a dime."

Prattis lived in the township for three years. She reportedly distributes

the meals to the 60 or so children at a gazebo on her

property during the summer months, when children are home from school.

The Delaware County Times reports that another resident alerted the council

about the distribution a few weeks ago. The council

investigated and ruled that the practice is not permitted without a

variance, the paper reported.

"You have houses here, the roofs are falling in, and they could be focused

on a lot of more serious issues than me feeding

children," she said.

Chester Township, which has a per capita income of $19,000 a year, says

Prattis lives in a residential zone, hence handing out food

to children is not allowed. The township says she needs to go before a

zoning board to ask for a variance, which would cost her up

to $1,000 in administrative fees.

"I don’t think it’s my responsibility to go to her to say, ‘why don’t you

come to talk to me to see if there’s something that we can

do to help your program,’" William Pisarek, the Chester Township business

manager, said.

Prattis told The Delaware County Times that she is not going to stop feeding

the children in the area.

Well at least it’s local. Wait until Obama tries to ‘solve this problem’ with a national policy.

Jerry Pournelle

Yep…that is a good point….and after I sent the email, I realized that when the township business manager said:

"I don’t think it’s my responsibility to go to her to say, ‘why don’t you come to talk to me to see if there’s something that we can do to help your program,’" William Pisarek, the Chester Township business manager, said."

…that he didn’t think it was his responsibility to help out someone doing a good thing, even with a phone call to suggest she come to his office and pay homage to him before continuing her work. He did however, have time to ensure that she felt the sting of a bureaucrat’s ire for not properly kowtowing to him without prompting through the threat of fines.

Tracy

I am far less concerned about thickheaded town clerks than I am about building a federal bureaucracy to “fix the problem”.

We’re broke: your sticker or your money…

By Jerry Pournelle | Aug 22, 2012 - 10:59 am | Updated: August 23, 2012 - 4:07 pm | View

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View 738 Wednesday, August 22, 2012

1048: the saga continues. Yesterday I spent the day driving my newly repaired car 60 miles while doing other errands, then got the smog certification. Unfortunately, since I had already paid the registration fee to DMV back last fall, the smog certifier couldn’t give me license tag stickers – he could if I had to pay the fee, but since I didn’t have to pay the fee —

Anyway, in a few minutes I will be off to AAA, which may have a remedy for me. My fear is that the rapacious city parking enforcement people, having already issued me one ticket (which I’ll pay) for not having that sticker will be watching with telescopes to find my car in a vulnerable place.

We’ll see what happens next. When the state is out of money – it estimated that it would get a billion dollars from taxing the Facebook IPO, and the Pension Fund still estimates it will get 7% on investments it is losing money on – then any revenue source is needed…

And I’m off.

1600: Done, and done. I have a big red sticker thing pasted on the inside of my back window that gives me King’s X until the DMV mails my permanent license plate sticker on the 29th of this month; this according to the AAA. I have to say the AAA has been greatly helpful in all this, and the only inconvenience was about 5 minutes wait for a human being on the phone on my first call when this all started, and perhaps that long waiting in a pleasant waiting room area for the agent who dealt with the whole matter for me. Which is to say no problems at all. It would be hard for them to have been more efficient.

There was one good outcome. The AAA office is out in Encino, most of the way to the Pizza Cookery, where they make excellent gluten free pizza, meaning that I could get a pizza that Roberta could eat. So I got her one, and I got one for me, and for once we had all the pizza we wanted. And now that the car registration drama is over I can get back to work.

Fred Reed has an insightful observation in his current Fred on Everything. The title Sauron’s Eye should be a clue. I should have something more substantive shortly. Technology marches on, and things change.

The Media Rule is that if a Democrat says something silly, he my be forgiven or may not, but if a Republican says anything eccentric it is a sign of his total unfitness for public office. In the case of Akin he seems to have been told some nonsense about female physiology that comes from wishful thinking. There is no evidence that women do not conceive after violent rape, and a rather large amount of history says otherwise. We might very well wish there were such a mechanism, as one might wish that the Lord tempers the wind for the shorn lamb, because a woman made pregnant by rape presents a moral dilemma of great magnitude. One cannot blame Mr. Akin for wishing such moral dillemae did not occur. I wish it myself. But for all the wishing we are faced with the moral dilemma: the rapist ought to be punished, but what has the unborn child done to deserve execution? Or if that’s too blunt, then to deserve our withdrawing the protection of the law on its very life? The unborn are innocent. The law should protect the innocent.

We can retreat from the dilemma by denying that the unborn is not yet a child, is not yet human, and for some number of hours or days or even weeks after conception there are good arguments for that, and indeed the doctrine of quickening was part of the common law for centuries. (Quickening held that until the woman felt the child move within her womb it was not legally an unborn child.) Quickening – religiously, ‘ensoulment’ – was held to take place 40 days after conception. This was believed by the ancient Greeks and came down through the ages. Legally, I guess, ensoulment takes place at the first breath, but that isn’t consistent since we have had convictions of manslaughter for causing involuntary abortion. And we are not going to get any agreement on these matters, which is why I don’t discuss them here. It has all been said many times.

But if the worst thing Mr. Akin has ever done is to wish for some relief from a moral dilemma by believing something untrue, and he has been willing to be convinced that his belief was incorrect and should not only be abandoned but apologized for, he is nothing like the worst candidate for Senate I have ever heard. Or even met. There are many Senators who endorse and pretend to believe things they know damned well aren’t true about economics and the effects of stimulus spending, and there are many who have to be pretty sure that the budgets they vote for are built around ludicrous assumptions.

Mr. Akins believes that in the case of rape the rapist ought to be punished, but the child should not be. This isn’t really a federal matter to begin with, and much as I wish it were, it is not the major danger facing these United States in this year of grace. We may all wish Mr. Akin hadn’t said what he did. But if the fate of the Republic rests on that, God has a very strange sense of humor indeed. And my guess is that Mr. Akin may not have as much trouble raising money as his opponents think he will. His position is that of most of the bishops in the United States.

I have variants on this letter from many subscribers and readers:

There have been a few military members recently getting into trouble for expressing their political views. No matter how truthful certain observations are, they simply can’t be made (and reasonable conclusions drawn) by military members.

But this we can say: FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING YOU HOLD PRECIOUS PLEASE VOTE THIS YEAR

That is all.

Serving military member

A question about D’Souza, bunny inspectors, and a short mail bag

By Jerry Pournelle | Aug 21, 2012 - 12:33 am | Updated: August 21, 2012 - 12:33 am | Mail

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Mail 738 Monday, August 20, 2012

Regarding the D’Souza piece

Jerry:

Here’s where he lost me:

"A couple of years ago, George teamed up with a British journalist Damien Lewis and the two of them published George’s story in a book called "Homeland." Yet according to Lewis, shortly before the book’s publication in America, the publisher Simon & Schuster decided to shred the **entire** print run, more than 20,000 copies." (emphasis added)

OK, that implies there should be no US-published copies available, which should be fairly easy to check. I went to barnesandnoble.com. I went to amazon.com.

Hardcover copies by Simon & Schuster are available in both venues, and there are both Nook and Kindle editions — which would presumably have come out after the hardcover.

Perhaps the rest of the article has some grains of truth in it. But if D’Souza can’t be bothered with the easy-to-check stuff, it prompts me to be even more skeptical on the hard-to-check, no secondary source, "I alone escaped to tell thee" stuff.

Hoping this finds you well,

— Hal

I have no idea. Perhaps someone more familiar with this can comment? I have not met Mr. D’Souza but I know many people who have, and I have worked with some of them. But you ask a question that deserves an answer.

Maybe Apple doesn’t have special screws to keep you out of their hardware, but I know from repair experience on a MacBook Pro (the ones where the battery is completely internal) that their battery is held in by screws that need a special tool. At the time I was doing this repair, this tool was only sold online to authorized dealers. Fortunately, some non-optimal tools can be adapted to remove the battery.

The place to go when you want to get inside Apple hardware is iFixit.com.

Tom Brosz

Thank you.

Not just bunny inspectors ….

Despite having no horses, the water and sewerage department for the city of Detroit employs a horseshoer

http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/17404

Monty

In the army we called them farriers and there was a theoretical slot for them in cavalry regiments in Headquarters Troop. I expect they have revised that in the past decades.

Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

<http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-lunch-lady-20120817,0,5201567.story>

Roland Dobbins

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Dependence

Jerry,

I run a little website and one of my guest writers has come up with a really interesting take on society’s current entitlement mindset. He’s taken Maslows Heirarchy of Needs and is examining entitlements and government actions under a hierarchy of dependence (using Maslow’s needs hierarchy)…I think it’s a cool concept and haven’t seen it covered anyplace else. Be interested in your thoughts if you had time to take a look at it… http://prepography.com/category/guestblogger/roger-reality/

Wish I’d come up with it,

Andrew J. Jackson

Allies

Dr Pournelle, here is a thought about protection of the people. I’ve had a few liberals tell me that they see the need for a powerful Federal Government in order to protect the people from Big Business.

It is my contention that this is insane.

First, as a matter of history, the government, weak when Teddy was in charge as compared to today, had little trouble beating up on business when it was relatively very powerful. Even today little tinhorn states around the world routinely nationalize or blackmail multinational corporations without fear.

Second, and more importantly, big government and big business are natural allies. Government has power, but wants money. Business has money, but wants power. Government sees business as a source of revenue to buy votes and ensure friends and allies are taken care of, and even themeselves once they leave government service. Business sees government as a source of protection from competition. Neither has any great need for specific people, just sufficient to pay taxes, vote and purchase goods and services.

So, why would anyone think big government will provide any protection from big business? Aside from political rhetoric and the drek we get for entertainment, I see no such reason. Far more often we see powerful businessmen like Corzine getting preferential treatment by the government, or government officials like Stephanopoulos getting hired on by one business or another after leaving the government.

G

Conservatives do not believe in weak government; it should be strong, but its size and jurisdiction should be limited. And certainly there is more than enough power over Wall Street except that the system is so large now that it can’t act quickly or effectively.

Armed Pizza Delivery

I guess, now, we have to admit that things have gone pear shaped:

<.>

Has it come to this? Yes it has, according to Joan McKenna, whose son Tim McKenna, 19, was shot while delivering pizza in Detroit.

In the wake of the shooting, a Jets Pizza franchise in Dearborn ruled it will no longer deliver to Detroit after dark. Before the shooting, they sent two drivers to every nighttime Detroit delivery, one of whom was armed, Joan McKenna said.

“They usually send somebody with a guy … who carries a gun,” she said. “Usually they have two go into Detroit after dark, if they have a delivery … One guy has a legal, he can carry a gun. That night, Timmy was the only one left, they had this one run to do, he said ‘yeah, I’ll do it.’ He’s a kid, he doesn’t think anything’s going to happen to him.”

</>

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2012/08/17/pizza-franchise-creates-not-after-dark-delivery-rule-in-detroit-after-driver-shot/

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

We have sown the wind. Now we reap.

Lucifer’s Hammer review…

http://thesurvivalmom.com/2012/08/16/3-survival-novels-you-should-read-a-video-review/

Charles Brumbelow

I will say now that we left out a good bit on purpose. In particular we used mustard rather than another war gas for reasons of social responsibility. An interesting review.

Dutch to Mars?

Jerry,

I didn’t know if you’d heard about this. The article is from June, 2012, and this is the first I’ve heard anything about it. A Dutch "researcher" has announced plans to have a permanent settlement on Mars by 2023.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2405162,00.asp

Have you heard of this fellow, and is he believable? The article is written in a way that kind of hints that they think he is a crackpot.

Chris Poor

This is the first I have heard of it, but I am not as well connected as I used to be.