Monthly Archives: August 2012

View 736 Saturday, August 11, 2012

My son Commander Phillip Pournelle is on his way home with his wife and my granddaughter, leaving us at the Beach House for a couple of days while friends take care of the house and look after Sable. That gave me time to get some work done, and I discovered that I can’t really work when connected with dialup. Mail contains links, my memory keeps slipping and I find I have to look something up that I ought to know, and generally I find I am more dependent on the cloud that I really want to be. That is going to take some thinking about. Meanwhile, there is a solution to the problem when you find you are somewhere without high speed connection and no Wifi. Of course that’s fairly rare. Hotels and airports and even coffee shops have Wifi. I have an old low cost t-mobile account (one I can renew but could never get again, alas) because at one time most airports had t-mobile. But sometimes it happens, and my beach house is one of the places that simply doesn’t have Internet or Wifi connectivity. Fortunately there’s a solution to that, called AT&T 3G, and it works. Of course that means you have to deal with AT&T, and, alas, it’s still The Phone Company, so a story goes with this. I’ll tell it later. Meanwhile I am on at medium speed by means of 3G.

It’s Paul Ryan. Roberta woke me up this morning to tell me. He was her favorite for VP. He has strong credentials – trained under Jack Kemp, conservative wing of the Republican Party, elected 7 times from a not Republican district, gets along well enough with the Republican Establishment that he has become Chairman of the Budget Committee, but not at all closely associated with the Country Club Republicans.

And as Roberta observes, he’s not pretentious. He’s articulate (clean and articulate) and he’s not afraid to stand up for what he believes in, witness that he was polite but not obsequious to the President in their much publicized meetings despite the President’s obvious disdain. And, Roberta says, besides, all his heroes are your heroes. All true, and Newt says the same thing. Newt Gingrich was quick to cheer the selection.

Ryan clearly scares some Democrats, who have rushed out to say Ryan is who they wanted because he will make this an ideological election, and they want to run on ideology. Odd, because Ryan will say he is running against liberals and liberalism, and what will the Democrats do: ere the cock crows twice they will deny liberalism thrice? I would have thought that an ideological campaign is precisely what they do not want, since they have to defend the liberal agenda, and that is not all that popular in the polls.

Of course they will use scare tactics. Pushing grandma over the cliff in her wheel chair. They will surely accuse Ryan of wanting to end Medicare, when it is Obamacare that is ending it: when Mr. Obama said that if you like your health care plan now you will get to keep it under Obamacare, and that is simply not true. Part of the financing for Obmamacare has been cut out of Medicare. And the Democrats haven’t been able to pass a budget in over a year, even in the Senate. I do not think that Romney and Ryan have much to fear in debating health care either as ideology or as plans, particularly since it’s not at all clear that Mr. Obama understands the details either intellectually or technically. Ryan does.

Another criticism I have heard of the new ticket is that it has little experience in foreign policy. Leaving out that anyone including Elmer Fudd has more experience in foreign affairs than the current President had on taking office, it’s easy enough to describe Ryan’s foreign policy: we are the friends of liberty everywhere but we are guardians only of our own; and if you would have peace, be prepared for war, which is to say you can trim details and needless spending but the US needs a strong military, and particularly a Navy, but we should not be using it to mind other people’s business. I think I could write a good foreign policy paper for Romney/Ryan, and I could put together a pretty good group to draft and critique it. Not that I’m volunteering. I did that in 1980 for the incoming Reagan administration, but that was thirty years ago. It’s someone else’s turn. But “inexperience in foreign policy” is dangerous ground for Mr. Obama and his people to wander into.

I will have more to say about using 3G later this evening. Here’s what happened last time…

http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com/oa/2011/20110711_col.php

The 3G story will have to wait until tomorrow or Monday. AT&T has some interesting policies. It’s still The Phone Company.

Note that I put this up as G3, demonstrating a distinct absence of mind. Peter Glaskowsky reminds me that it’s 3G as in Third Generation. I fixed it, and discovered that Windows Live Writer has a “find” but no find and replace. I thought I had downloaded and installed a “plug in” but it hasn’t done anything for me. Apparently you need to use Office to do any real editing, and Live Writer is a poor relation that Microsoft isn’t terribly interested in fixing. I thought there was a search and replace function in Live Writer, but I find there is not.

I’m working on the 3G 900 story. As I noted in http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com/oa/2011/20110711_col.php the AT&T USB 900 actually works pretty well, but you still have to deal with AT&T and in many ways they are still The Phone Company. It took me over an hour at the AT&T Store over on Rosecrans in San Diego to get mine running again, even though I have used it for a year. The problem is that I hadn’t used it in 180 days, and AT&T doesn’t like that. Eventually I got it straightened out. I’ll try to write that tonight.

And I heard good speeches from Ryan and Romney today. They are firing up the campaign. I’ll have some words on that shortly. Those who believe that making this a campaign on the real central issues is a gift to the Democrats – I have a bunch of mail from people who believe that – may be right, but in that case, government by rational discussion is doomed as is the whole notion of the United States as proposed in the Convention of 1787. We’ll need a brand new Constitution if we can’t discuss issues for fear of losing the election. Perhaps that is true, in which case we have sown the wind indeed, indeed. But I don’t think that’s the case. I do not think we have become that degenerate.

More later. I’m watching 60 Minutes on it now.

View 736 Thursday, August 09, 2012

Still on the road on dialup. Son Phil with wife and grandchild are in town, and will be tomorrow. We’ll go home after that.

Not much change in the political scene. The Obama strategy is to get people disgusted with the process so they will stay home. Romney’s strategy is to avoid making waves and make the Democrats work at finding things to attack Romney on. There’s an attempt at generating suspense in who will be Romney’s choice for VP, but it probably won’t really matter who is chosen.

Sorry to be so brief. It has been a good day but a bit tiring.

The late Dr. Stefan Possony did many studies of terrorism including compendia of terrorist incidents and worked on classification systems. When he had his final stroke in the mid 80’s that stopped his work, and although for a while the Hoover attempted to put together a final report from his notes, that never happened. That may be unfortunate. Possony had a way of finding insights and theories in what looks at first like a mass of unrelated data. One conclusion you could draw is that statistically the sheer numbers of acts of terrorism peaked well before the turn of the 21st Century, This would surprise most people who think acts of terrorism grow exponentially and monotonically,

Another change has been toward directed acts of terrorism as part of a strategy. In the Middle East there are many potential terrorists associated with particular causes, and sometimes they need only encouragement to develop into operatives, either suicidal or clandestine, for one or another purpose. That is, there are many causes, and each cause has from a few to a lot of believers of various states of strength of belief; and many of them have significant numbers of believers who would seriously consider committing an act of terror for the cause.  There are also leaders capable of forming individual acts into a pattern so that the acts advance a particular cause, or a particular faction with the cause. This goes on continuously, but it is generally not studied continuously.The results can be very good for upholders of peace and order,  but just as likely to be given up just as a breakthrough is about to be achieved.

The objectives of terrorism have changed. For a long time there were acts of terror intended to strengthen the will of the Jewish settlers in Israel and strengthen Zionism. The most spectacular was the assassination of Bernadotte. Then came Israeli retaliations against acts of existence to the Jewish occupation of lands not designated for incorporation into Israel proper. At the same time, the Palestinians and their friends were learning the art of terrorism, and even began experiments to see what acts were more effective.

Decades ago I did a major study for the USAF Air Council on Strategic Stability. It served as a policy basis for some years. It was done during the Cold War but attempted to generalize principles applicable to other international configurations. It might be well to read again Richardson’s Statistics of Deadly Quarrels, and certainly time to read it if they never have,

Jerry,

Regarding the July heat, Dr. Roy Spencer has several posts:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/

The last shall be first: both the global average temperature and the northern hemisphere overall average dropped about 0.1 degree from June.

He proceeds that with a series of posts on the North American temperature anomaly in that period, questioning Hansen’s claim that July was the warmest month ever for the United States.

Jim

We can all be certain that whatever the truth about climate change – something both inevitable and not likely to be rapid – we don’t understand what is going on. We can’t even predict short term rises and falls in temperature.

The rising trends we have seen do not lead to rapid doom. The falling trends in the last century were a bit scarier but didn’t last. And there we are.

View 736 Wednesday, August 08, 2012

On the road, with dialup. All’s well at home although Sable wonders where we went and it’s very hot in Los Angeles. She’s in good hands with our friends who house sit for us when we’re away.

I’m trying to get back to speed. Just at the moment I am at the end of a dialup account, which makes that rather difficult, but the good news is that I feel better and seem to have a bit more energy. I think I picked up some kind of summer slump ailment which I am getting over.

The Obama camp is now demanding Romney’s tax returns, or anything else they can find so they can look for something to denounce Romney for. They can’t believe that he doesn’t have a few mistresses, or some stolen money,k or unpaid taxes, or perhaps he misstated one of his grades and it won’t match his transcript or maybe he stole the cheese from a farmer’s rat trap, or something anything really.

One obvious answer to this would be to ask to see some of Mr. Obama’s documents, such as his grade transcripts or his Harvard application, or the essay that got him promoted to President of the Harvard Law Review (even though the Review never published it) or his Columbia records or even attendance records or some sign that he was actually there, The temptation to make those demands must be high in the Obama camp. So far they aren’t doing it.

Mr. Romney is going to insist that Mr. Obama run on his record. Mr. Obama’s supporters say this is a dirty trick. They don’t have much of a record to run on, so they have to attack. You can only get so much mileage out of giving a kill order after denying it several times, And it’s hard to brag about the Proscription List of American citizens to be killed on sight. Who’s on it? Do they deserve to be on it? Who is competent to decide who should be on a proscription list? it is not really a constitutionally defined office. As Cicero told the soldier who was to execute him without trial, “There is nothing proper about what you are about to do, young man.”  So there is a limit to what you can claim for your kill record, and things go downhill from there. Tougher to run on the progress made in Iraq in the last three years, or in Afghanistan,  But turning to the economy is even harder if you want a record to run on. There has been plenty of stimulus but not much response, and Government investments haven’t done much for infrastructure and haven’t produced much sustainable energy. Policy wonks wonk away but the results are thin on the ground. So try to provoke Romney into doing something outrageous like – well, like treat questions directed to him as a man who actually ran Olympic Games. Ask if he thought Britain was ready, and getting the truthful response that yes, pretty well, but you know there are always glitches and things you wish you had thought of and now we can stop listening and pounce! He’s blackguarding our friends.

But so far Romney hasn’t played into their hand.

It’s pretty clear that the Romney strategy now is to avoid mucking things up, and not to respond to most of the Obama camp’s increasingly shrill charges, some of which begin to sound like ravings. Of course the notion is to let a thousand skunk cabbages bloom, and those which become really foul can be disowned. Meanwhile, the steady beat will discourage voters and many of those who have decided they don’t want to vote for Mr. Obama may call a pox on both houses and stay home. The unions continue to get out the vote and the absentee ballots and whatever boxes of votes that can be discovered the day after election day – or a week after if needed – and this will result in the reelection.

It’s possible. Of course it works only if the voters let it. They figure that people who will be so disgusted that they’ll stay home were lost to Obama to begin with. That’s a desperation strategy and it is contemptuous of the American People.

People in this country generally get about the government they deserve: those who will neither govern themselves nor be involved in supervising those they choose to govern for them are always astonished when the inevitable happens to them. If that’s what they wanted, they should have picked a good hereditary aristocracy. Actually that is close to what we are doing now, with unionized public service bureaus with very good pay. The career of policeman begins to sound quite good. Fireman may be even better. Lifetime pay and health care, and a good chance to get at least one of your kids into it. And those are the elites, who have to, and mostly do, actually perform well in difficult jobs. But police and fire are not exempt from Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, and certainly city and county cubicle workers aren’t. India knows a very great deal about that sort of thing with the “Permit Raj” years (which are still very much in power in some states in India even now).

But that’s enough gloom for the evening. I have some confidence in the American people: the political campaign has reached the stomach turning point, but we’ll see it through. And I can’t wait for November.

View 736 Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Thanks to all who have remembered that it’s my birthday, and more thanks to those who used this as an occasion to subscribe or renew.

I used to go to SIGGRAPH fairly regularly and I had sort of planned to get down there this afternoon, but I kept putting things off, and this morning I had an appointment with the dermatologist. I came back with sticking plaster all over my face, and not a lot of energy. Nothing serious, but biopsies on my nose and cheek and while he was in there on my cheek he chopped out whatever was there. The result didn’t leave me with much energy, and tomorrow we have other stuff we have to do. It’s also over 97 degrees outside my back door, and I’m really not up to driving downtown, so I guess I’ll miss SIGGRAPH. Peter Glaskowsky and my son Alex will both be down there, and it would be a good thing to go have dinner with them and find out what all’s going on, but I’m just not up to it. I’ll have to find out another time.

The bill is in for the Occupy Los Angeles demonstration, and it’s about $5 million. The Mayor, meanwhile, is making speeches about how we have to be smarter in city operations and save money, but I don’t think he is counting on this as a good example of that .Even so, I expect we got off easy compared to some cities.

That got me thinking about demonstrations and causes. It’s hard to know precisely what Occupy Los Angeles wanted – they never did get agreement on any statement of demands – but as near as I can tell the major concern of those who chose to speak to reporters was over income inequality. It may be that income inequality is something to be concerned about, but the Occupy Los Angeles people – dubbed “The Occupoopers” by many Los Angeles commentators – did not get many people thinking about that issue.

Apologies. I intended at least one essay today, but the day was devoured by small things. It’s now late, and there’s a lot to do tomorrow. I work bestr when I have routines, and they have all been disrupted.

My congratulations to JPL and the Curiosity crew. We need to know more about Mars. That doesn’t change my mind: the next step in the conquest of space is a permanent base on the Moon, and more experience in exploiting space resources. Of course compared to Mars the Moon seems fairly dull, but getting to Mars will be a lot simpler when we have a Moon Base and a place where we can test NERVA and other nuclear propulsion systems in vacuum with a machine shop and materials handy. Hohmann orbits are not the key to the planets. We need Heinlein’s ‘torchships”, but they turn out to be a great deal more difficult than we believed in that golden age. On the other hand, we have tested NERVA and got exhaust velocities double theoretical maxima of chemical rockets. NERVA and a Moon Base can make possible the kind of asteroid commerce I describe in Birth of Fire, High Justice, Exile and Glory, and other works I did in the 1980’s. I have seen nothing to make those stories obsolete, and the only failures we have had are those of nerve.

We’re still going. It may take longer than I expected, and the language of space doesn’t have to be English. But we’ll go. To the Moon, the asteroids, that planets, and then we’ll learn how to go further. And it’s time for bed.

Once again, my thanks to all those who wished me a happy birthday, and more thanks to those who subscribed or renewed. I’ll be back in action by the end of the week. I even managed several hundred new words on Janissaries yesterday. I’m a year older, but my head is still working, Perhaps a bit more slowly, but it’s still there.

‘At 5:02 p.m., they reset my Twitter password. At 5:00 they used iCloud’s “Find My” tool to remotely wipe my iPhone. At 5:01 they remotely wiped my iPad. At 5:05 they remotely wiped my MacBook. Around this same time, they deleted my Google account.’

<http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/all/>

Roland Dobbins

Great Heavens!