Chaos Manor View and Mail, Thursday, February 11, 2016
More dentistry, but I drove myself to the dentist, and tonight Roberta drove herself to choir practice; we have reached the recuperation phase of the various ailments that have been bugging us. Tomorrow I should do a full day’s work, God willing.
Also I solved the dreaded 503 error and understand it now for the Surface Pro 3 with Pro 4 keyboard, which combination I recommend; I doubt I will buy a Pro 4, at least for a while; I can recommend the Surface Pro 3 with Pro 4 keyboard as good enough for a road warrior. Do carry a charging system and use often. Write-up coming in Chaos Manor Reviews covering 503 error, fingerprint ID on the Pro 4, and some more on .pst files.
It’s late. Short shrift time. Gravitational waves; I have a young friend who has a working fellowship at Cal Tech so I pretty well knew it was coming, but I wasn’t on the official press list (which was embargoed anyway) and it would have done you no good to know a few days in advance. I haven’t thought what this does to Beckmann’s ether theory, but it does not seem to me to refute it; Beckmann postulated that the local gravitational field is the aether in which everything waves, and I see no evidence that negates that. Beckmann assumed that gravity propagates at the speed of light, but that is not unchanging depending on the strength of the local gravitational field, and might be significantly different between galaxies or at galactic centers; this may go a way to explaining the gravitational anomalies which have caused the postulation of dark matter and dark energy. At this point you have exceeded my mathematical abilities and I must leave the rest to someone who knows better.
But, so far as I can tell, the confirmation of the existence of gravity waves is a confirmation of General Relativity, but also a confirmation — or at least not a falsification – of Beckmann’s gravity field as aether hypothesis. I am sure we will have considerable discussion on this in weeks to come.
Wish I could go.
I have said this before and I have seen no reason to change my view: Trump is not a Conservative as paleo conservatives understand the word, and he has no real conservative theories: he is a pragmatic populist in the tradition of Andrew Jackson or Herbert Hoover. He has no experience in governing, but he does have considerable experience in management including management of what would have been considered enormous projects not all that long ago. Reagan learned from governing California; Trump will not have that experience if he becomes President. He will discuss goals with potential managers and engineers, form some notion of the possibilities of success and the costs of failure, and choose those projects which he thinks will make us look great, get employment growing, etc. He does not try to look statesmanlike, but he can assume enough gravitas for the occasion when it arises. He will not be unintentionally rude. He knows he must enlist the services of people who don’t much like him; he has done that well in the past.
If you went by credentials, Jeb Bush is the most qualified; but you get his relatives and their friends with him, and that means the Republican Establishment and thus more of the same; and the country is sick of them. Both Democrats and Republicans have grown weary of what we have and want something different and new. No one asked Barrack the Magic Negro for blueprints of Hope and Change, and he hadn’t even managed the construction of a big building.
When I was growing up we were taught in sixth grade that Democrats wanted “tariff for revenue only;” Republicans wanted protective tariff to keep manufacturing – and jobs – at home. Abraham Lincoln said of tariff, if he buys a shirt from England, he gets the shirt but the money leaves the country and pays wages to Englishmen; if he buys it from a US manufacturer, he has the shirt, and the money stays in America, paying American workers. This is, according to Ricardo, far too simple an analysis; but it appeals to reason. American goods may cost more without overseas competition, but the money and jobs stay/ cheaper goods are not always appealing to those who have no jobs to give then wages, and must rely in government to pay them for not working; and a sizeable number of “workers” resent being on the unemployment role and getting welfare aid.
The US establishment went to war in 1940, and suddenly produced tanks, rifles, airplanes, trucks, bandages, ammunition, cargo ships and battleships; when the American people rose up they drowned Germany and Japan in war materiel. The German war machine used animal drawn transport to supply much of the Wehrmacht; The United States turned the last cavalry regiments into mechanized units and the Red Ball Express that supplied Patton. I used mules to plow cotton fields during World War II; but our soldiers did not depend on mules for ammunition. If all our plants had been in Frankfurt instead of Detroit, the outcome might have been different.
That, I believe, is how Trump sees things.
NSS Pays Tribute to Late NSS Governor Dr. Marvin Minsky, A Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence
(Washington DC, February 11, 2016) The National Space Society pays tribute to Dr. Marvin Minsky, a pioneer of artificial intelligence, who served as a long-time member of the NSS Board of Governors, and was involved in the original merger of the L5 Society and the National Space Institute to create the National Space Society. Dr. Minsky was very involved in early NSS activities and was part of many NSS space policy projects such as the 1981 “Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy.” He attended Board of Governors meetings and participated in NSS’s annual International Space Development Conference.® He died on January 14 in Boston from a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 88 years old.
Marvin was also the thesis advisor for current NSS Governor K. Eric Drexler, a pioneer in the field of nanotechnology and an early activist who helped start NSS.Hugh Downs, Chair of the NSS Board of Governors, said, “Marvin Minsky was a bright light in the arena of accelerating knowledge in modern physics. Where many of us plodded along to keep up with these changes, he seemed to always manage to be even with them. He will be sorely missed by those who worked with him and knew him well.”
Marvin Minsky was Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research led to both theoretical and practical advances in artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, neural networks, the theory of Turing Machines and recursive functions. He made other contributions in the domains of graphics, symbolic mathematical computation, knowledge representation, computational semantics, machine perception, and both symbolic and connectionist learning. He was also involved with advanced technologies for exploring space.
In October 2015, the MIT Media Lab presented Marvin with a gift in honor of his lifetime commitment to MIT students. “What a beautiful thing. What does it do?” he asked, when studying the world’s first 3D-printed clear glass object. View the presentation here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tIIe3NnodU .
The report from the Citizens Advisory Council, in which Marvin participated, was titled Space: The Crucial Frontier and includes this preamble:
“Space is potentially our most valuable national resource. A properly developed space program can go far toward restoring national pride while developing significant and possibly decisive military and economic advantages. In exploring space we will rediscover frontiers and more than frontiers; we can rediscover progress. The exploitation of space will have far reaching historical significance. The statesmen who lead mankind permanently to space will be remembered when Isabella the Great and Columbus are long forgotten.” (http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/1981-council.htm)Today, NSS is vigorously promoting our expansion into space. We are engaging with the international community via collaborations, tracks at our annual International Space Development Conference, and articles in Ad Astra and in major international publications. NSS volunteers today maintain the Space Settlement Nexus (www.nss.org/settlement) in carrying forward Marvin Minsky’s vision.
###
I was one of the founding members of NSS, and For years was Secretary of the L5 Society.
After Armageddon
South Carolina New Poll Data
Jerry,
There’s been a dearth of new poll data out of South Carolina since before Iowa, a lifetime in politics. As of then, the RealClearPolitics.Com (RCP) average had Trump 36%, Cruz 20%, Rubio 13%, Bush 10%, Carson 9%, Kasich 2%.
Most of the “Polls Say” stories currently out there are based on this obsolete data, and can be safely ignored. (Though keep an eye on RCP over the coming days, as new polls are no doubt in the works – but pay more attention to the actual new polls than to the average, until the old polls have rolled out of it!)
Today we finally have the first post-NH poll data out of SC (via Bill Kristol, though unofficial and with caveats): Trump 32%, Cruz 26%, Rubio 20%, Bush 10%, Carson 7%, Kasich 2%.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/sc-poll-trump-32-cruz-26-rubio-20-bush-10/article/2001032
So (assuming Kristol isn’t being played or the poll isn’t an outlier) over the last three weeks in SC Trump lost some ground, Cruz closed to within striking distance, and Rubio moved up to a solid third place.
Meanwhile Bush, Carson, and Kasich largely held on to what they had (but absent major gains what they had is likely to not be very relevant.)
My chief takeaway today: The SC Republican insurgent vote looks to be 65% (Trump, Cruz, Carson) even without trying to figure out how much of Rubio’s support is Tea Party types going along (for now) with his two-lane bid for establishment support.
New Hampshire’s 49% Rep establishment turnout (arguably less given Rubio’s 10% included in it) may be their high-water mark for this campaign. Iowa’s and now South Carolina’s two-thirds insurgent majorities may be the rule.
If so, I’m thinking that the Republican establishment needs to begin seriously considering which flavor of insurgency will be best for the country overall, and make their peace. My take is, they’ll survive that a lot better over the long run than if they throw the race to whoever they think best for themselves in the short run.
Porkypine
I have no significant quarrel with your analysis.
Talk Like Reagan
The following is extracted from a piece called “How to Win the White House and Save the World: Don’t Talk of Reagan. Talk Like Reagan.”
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/361326.php (Ace of Spades HQ, via Instapundit)
The point made here strikes me as both highly explanatory of the current race and profoundly important. Read the whole thing, but the heart of it is here:
– begin quote –
There is a principle called the 80/20 principle. You surely know it: 20% of the work produces 80% of the gains. But the next 80% of the work only produces the last 20% of the gains.
Trump is being taken seriously because he’s not forgetting the most important thing: to tell people
* This will make you freer.
* This will make you safer.
* This will make you richer.
* This will make you happier.
* This will make a better world for your children.
That’s 20% of politics. He doesn’t do the 80%, the hard thinking about policy, the homework, because he’s a little lazy.
Yet his 20% is producing that magical 80% of the benefits, whereas many other candidates are focusing on the 80% that only gets you the 20%.
Everyone can beat Trump.
They just have to re-read Reagan, look at those beautiful words, each so simple but so perfect, and how, after every single policy proposal, Reagan explained to you:
* This will make you freer.
* This will make you safer.
* This will make you richer.
* This will make you happier.
* This will make a better world for your children.
Trump is doing the 20% and getting the 80% because he can’t really do more than that 20%. That’s really all he has.
But other candidates, who know the whole 100%, are getting bogged down in the 80% that gets you the 20%.
Anyone can beat Trump.
All it takes is speaking like Reagan.
– end quote –
Porkypine
I doubt whether Franklin Roosevelt knew how to loft an airplane or build a bombsight. Oy, have you studied Huey Long’s career? Speaking like Reagan is not trivial; having participated in some of the efforts to write speeches for him, I can assure you of that. Most career Sergeants Major know far more how to do things than their officers; and smart officers know this, and are advised on what can and cannot be done; but they seldom rise to command.
Trump says this will make YOU happier; I’m already happy.
Like the county roads commissioner who kept winning election although there was a weird road snaking through the hollows forty miles to make it easier for him to get to town – and ran on a platform of “I’ve got my road. I’ll build the ones you need.”
While I was rummaging around in the Beyond Belief cupboard
As a Cybersecurity guy that has worked in this field for more years than I care to count, this says it all:
“…Obama created two new entities as part of a $19 billion budget proposal to Congress on cybersecurity: The first, a Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, will be made up of business, technology, national security and law enforcement leaders who will make recommendations to strengthen online security in the public and private sectors. It will deliver a report to the president by Dec. 1….”
And:
“The second, a Federal Privacy Council, will bring together chief privacy officers from 25 federal agencies to coordinate efforts to protect the vast amounts of data the federal government collects and maintains about taxpayers and citizens.”
$19 Billion dollars for a bunch of people who are probably mostly incompetent or at a minimum focused on their own varied agendas to produce “A REPORT BY DECEMBER 1.”
And the second group is the set of dumbasses that failed in the first place. You are going to keep them on staff and pay them MORE money!?!?
Good grief. $19 Billion … and all they produce is a report in just under a YEAR. $19 Billion would fix ALL their problem systems, upgrade them, put in state of the art security systems and train users.
One more COLOSSAL waste of money.
What they need is some competent System Architects and Security people. But they won’t hire them, they’ll hire by cronyism.
Trace
Nuclear winter rides again
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
It appears that nuclear winter, which we haven’t heard about in years , is once again saddling up as a theory.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/opinion/lets-end-the-peril-of-a-nuclear-winter.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
I need a sanity check; they claim that detonating 50 Hiroshima-size bombs (10 kt) would generate enough smoke and so forth to cause climate change for decades.
The thought that springs to my mind is: Wait a moment. Weren’t the conventional thousand-bomber raids which, on a nightly basis, incinerated Cologne, Dresden, Osaka, Tokyo on a par with the damage done to Hiroshima by one bomb? It wasn’t that Hiroshima was especially atrocious or the destruction exceptional compared to what conventional bombers did; it’s that it only took one airplane to do the job.
I would like to take their models and run them against a conventional bombing raid of the sort that was common in both Europe and the pacific from 1944 and 1945, then compare against what climatological results actually occurred.
Respectfully,Brian P.
My former student asks a good question
Rohrabacher: Why Is America Restarting the Cold War With Russia?
<http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-america-restarting-the-cold-war-russia-15183?page=show>
—————————————
Roland Dobbins
Russia, WWIII
I’ve mentioned the possibility of another world war for some time.
Comparatively recently, I mentioned the Gulf State force and the declaration made by that Saudi general that they were ready to go to Syria. Well, Russia did not take kindly to their offer:
<.>
Russia issued a stark warning of the potential consequences. “The Americans and our Arab partners must think well: do they want a permanent war?” its prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, told Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper in an interview due to be published on Friday but released on Thursday night.
“It would be impossible to win such a war quickly, especially in the Arab world, where everybody is fighting against everybody.
“All sides must be compelled to sit at the negotiating table instead of unleashing a new world war.”
</>
One of the flash-points I raised was the Middle East; the others are the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Korean Peninsula. I predicted simultaneous conflicts in three of those four areas would lead to a situation where a third world war would be a major concern if not an inevitable crisis.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
Putin thinks of us in the Balkans, where we took the anti-Slavic side and bombed hell out of Serbs, dropped the Danube bridges, and generally made them miserable. Imperial Russia went to war to save the Serbs from Austria; why do we think the Russian people have forgotten that they are leaders of the pan-Slavic movement?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwqdOhF6LhE
The U.S. Military Suffers from Affluenza.
<http://www.unz.com/article/the-u-s-military-suffers-from-affluenza/>
—————————————
Roland Dobbins
So do our universities.
Ideologues as Journalists
In another example of an ideologue convincing some managers and swathes of the general public they’re really journalists:
<.>
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough Thursday momentarily blamed GOP candidate Marco Rubio’s “dirty money” for pushing GOP presidential rival Chris Christie’s numbers down to fourth place in the New Hampshire primary and his eventual decision to drop out of the race, a slip that could add fuel to the growing complaints about the morning show.
</>
https://www.newsmax.com/Headline/Joe-Scarborough-Rubio-Dark-Money-Chrisie/2016/02/11/id/713833/
What is this clown even speaking of? What dirty money? How did this “dirty money” do what he’s saying? What is this madness? This is what passes for news programming in 2016? I’d expect to see this kind of crap in some backwater with limited access to electricity not in the United States.
He might as well accuse Rubio of sending evil spirits to destroy Christie’s electoral support.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
Subject: the gravity-wave article from PhysRevLett
https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102
Stephanie Osborn“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.sciencealert.com/live-update-big-gravitational-wave-announcement-is-happening-right-now
Stephanie Osborn“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
I am OUTRAGED by what this French woman describes has happened to her, her family, and her city in France.
Resident of Calais speaks. This is the death of civilization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKAQX74yRyc
I’d title this, “The Rape of Calais”. And their own government is as much at fault as the 18,000 “migrants”, aka Muslims.
After seeing this does *ANYBODY* think we do not need a second amendment or even do not need to exercise our second amendment to its fullest?
{o.o}
Sound familiar?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/10/svensmark-global-warming-stopped-and-a-cooling-is-beginning-enjoy-global-warming-while-it-lasts/
Stephanie Osborn“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
