Ancient Engineers, Modern Reading teaching, weather, smoking, and other matters

Mail 803 Sunday, December 22, 2013

Catching up with some of the mail. I get extremely interesting mail, and I try to post it with comments. I read all my mail, but sometimes I get overwhelmed, and often there is enough on a given subject that all the major views are covered, and more would simply be proof by repeated assertion, which we don’t do here. I try to print mail that disagrees with me and gives reasons; I seldom select mail that simply asserts that I am wrong and ought to be ashamed of myself.

This site is devoted to rational discussion of important matters coupled with things I find interesting. When I was part of the editorial committee that gave the BYTE Editor’s Choice awards and the Best of COMDEX Awards, our criterion was “Innovative, influence on the industry, and Way Cool.” I tend to use those criteria in selecting mail to answer, and since I am not picking the “best” of anything I can give more attention to what is just plain Way Cool and ought to be brought to the attention of my readers. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, anyway. In the real world I often get so much mail that I can’t possibly comment at length on all of it, and sometimes it gets past the point at which I can even give short shrift to everything.

This is one of those times.

Poverty and Industrial Revolutions Message

Rome may have been heir to a recent industrial revolution in the Mediterranean that increased agricultural output. Have you read "The Forgotten Revolution" by Lucio Russo?

Executive summary: circa 300BC Hellenist Greeks were at the center of a flourishing of science and technology, that the Roman conquests and possibly some structural weaknesses quenched.

Longer reviews at http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-forgotten-revolution-by-lucio-russo.html or http://www.ams.org/notices/199805/review-graffi.pdf

And of course there was more than one industrial revolution in the West: windmills and watermills drove the earlier one, steam began the later.

James Bellinger

I have read extensively about ancient technologies, both in derivative works like those of my friend and colleague L. Sprague de Camp as well as ancient sources and I think I am well acquainted with most of that period. There were local inventions in the time but they did not become wide spread.

See Nightmare with Angels, by Stephen Vincent Benet in an earlier View https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/iron-law-and-hatch-act/ which has a few other pertinent comments.

Way Cool

: Hand of God, or music of the spheres?

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/11/26/unusual-ice-circle-forms-in-north-dakota-river/

A forwarded letter:

DO YOU APPRECIATE THE LAW OF PHYSICS?

A very big Thanks to Michigan member Mike Partridge who sent in this bit of humor, which was forwarded from a senior-level person at Chrysler. The date on this note was Sunday, July 19, 2009.

Monday morning, I attended a breakfast meeting where the speaker/guest was David E. Cole. Chairman Center for Automotive Research (CAR and Professor at the University of Michigan). You have all likely heard CAR quoted. or referred to in the auto industry news lately.

Mr. Cole. who is an engineer by training, told many stories of the difficulty of working with the folks that the Obama administration has sent to save the auto industry. There have been many meetings where a 30+ year experienced automotive expert has to listen to a newcomer to the industry, someone with zero manufacturing experience, zero auto industry experience, zero finance experience and zero engineering experience, tell them how to run their business.

Mr. Cole’s favorite story is as follows: There was a team of Obama people speaking to Mr.

Cole (engineer, automotive experience of 40+ years, and Chairman of CAR). They were explaining to Mr. Cole than the auto companies needed to make a car than was electric and liquid natural gas (LNG) with enough combined fuel to go 500 miles so we wouldn’t "need"

so many gas stations (a whole other topic). They were quoting BTUs of LNG and battery life that they had looked up on some website.

Mr. Cole explained that to do this you would need a TRUNK FULL of batteries and a LNG tank as big as the car to make that happen, and that there were problems related to the laws of physics that prevented them from….

The Obama person interrupted and said (and I am quoting here). "These laws of Physics? Whose rules are those? We need to chance that." (Some of the others wrote down the law name so could could look it up.) "We have the congress and administration. We can repeal that law, amend it or use an executive order to get rid of that problem. That’s why we are here, to fix these sorts of issues."

…….And these are the same people who are going to fix healthcare?!

: 2013

without comment:

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/topten/articles/20131220.aspx

David Couvillon

Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Avoider of Yard Work

Who qualifies to teach reading to youngsters?

Jerry:

Your plea for competent reading teachers would not be hard to fulfill. As you say, the education establishment just needs to get out of the way, or the students just need to get out of the government education establishment.

My daughter (not trained as a teacher) taught her oldest daughter to read by the age of 5. Over the course of a couple of years she used homemade flash cards to teach the alphabet and then words and pronunciation using phonics. Of course she read to her daughter every day.

This oldest daughter at age six then took it upon herself to teach her younger sister to read. After that sister was reading by age 5 the two of them taught the third and youngest daughter to read. And so it came to pass that at Christmas time the youngest daughter at age 4-1/2 was reading Luke 2 from the NIV to her 90-year-old grandmother. (OK, I was there and helped with pronouncing some of the proper names.)

So it seems that children at 6 or 7 years of age are quite capable of doing what today’s college-educated teachers are taught is impossible, i. e., teaching young children to read.

I concluded that the qualifications for teaching reading included 1.) being able to read yourself, 2.) being passionate about books and reading, 3.) being interested in teaching others to read.

There are also qualifications for being a successful student of reading, namely, 1.) wanting to learn to read and 2.) willingness to practice reading.

Best regards,

–Harry M.

My wife taught reading for more than a decade in the school of last resort, a Los Angeles County Juvenile Detention Center. Her pupils came with five pounds of paper by experts proving that this child could not be taught to read and thus it was not the fault of the system that the kid was illiterate. She threw the paper away and taught them to read. All 6,000 of them. They all insisted that they did not want to learn; after they began to discover that they were learning to read they discovered they did want to learn: to the extent that when new one came into the class, which was frequent given what the school was, the students themselves imposed discipline on disturbers because they were learning and they wanted to continue to learn and they weren’t going to let the troublemakers take their education away from them. I can only tell you that in at least one case which I know about from direct evidence they all learned to read. Of course there was imposed discipline – although as I said, when they began to learn and realized they were learning, the students themselves took care of most classroom discipline.

”We’ve gotten smoking out of bars and restaurants on the basis of the fact that you and I and other nonsmokers don’t want to die. The reality is, we probably won’t.”

<http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2013/12/16/is-it-safe-yet-to-have-an-honest-conversation-about-secondhand-smoke-and-lung-cancer/>

Roland Dobbins

I have to say that I am glad to see the effective end of smoking, and I am not all that thrilled with the rise of electronic delivery of nicotine: I concluded forty years ago that smoking – even without lung cancer – cost about ten years of your life, and I can get a lot done in ten years. But I was never worried about second hand smoke; my resentment of other smokers had to do with temptation, not worry about second hand smoke. After a while I began to see smokers as horrible examples reinforcing my resolution to quit.

Todos Santos will be near San Francisco not LA

Jerry,

You and Niven were right about some things in Oath of Fealty, but I think it’s gonna be near either Google or Apple, not LA.

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/12/progress-haters-attack-google-bus.html

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/11/tech/innovation/google-bus-protest/index.html?iref=allsearch

There seems to be some fairly serious organization behind the protests and attacks, with both Google and Apple shuttles being targeted. Maybe the protestors prefer that all those employees drive themselves to work. Or maybe they prefer that everyone with a nice job live somewhere else and use their disposable income to enrich some other community. Or maybe they’re mad at life in general and just want to attack anyone who makes a serious attempt at doing things “right”. Todos Santos will be built in or near Silicon Valley, not Los Angeles. Maybe the reality is that with their new massive donut shaped building project, Apple is actually thinking too small.

Sean

Arcologies are very green, too. You will not that the Todos Santos people are middle class rich and very middle in politics. Oath of Fealty was meant as a serious work.

Merry Christmas

Dr Pournelle

For your holiday amusement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fe11OlMiz8

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

Remarkable

: Weather

Joe Bastardi (@BigJoeBastardi) tweeted at 6:00 AM on Sat, Dec 21, 2013:

Global sea ice now 2cnd highest on record http://t.co/bEI38xzYBd

Joe Bastardi (@BigJoeBastardi) tweeted at 5:52 AM on Sat, Dec 21, 2013:

Thirteen Years Of NASA Data Tampering – In Six Seconds http://t.co/WpcwQSqybN via @wordpressdotcom

Joe Bastardi (@BigJoeBastardi) tweeted at 5:50 AM on Sat, Dec 21, 2013:

Warmingistas, 3 more days of your weather then icebox returns. Severe cold developing over next 2 weeks plains east http://t.co/SA9TMWCXTL

Subject: What Happened when liberal Adolf Hitler’s Health Insurance is Cancelled

Things are rough all over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USG_gjaEYak <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USG_gjaEYak>

Dr Pournelle

Economics 101 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h8O7V-WxWQ>

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

It’s not genetics or racism it’s victimhood.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/12/thomas-sowell/does-the-welfare-state-lower-iqs/

Counter-developing countries

Dr Pournelle

May we use the term ‘counter-developing’ for countries that once were productive but have been turned unproductive? For example, Zimbabwe. I recall when Zimbabwe exported wheat and good coffee. Now they import food.

What changed? Well, we all know the answer to that, don’t we: the gov’t.

I suppose the same can be said for Liberia. (I am in favor of making Liberia an American protectorate. We made the mess. We ought to manage it.)

FWIW, I say that since 1975 famine anywhere is not a production problem; it is a political problem. Somalians were starving. The Army and Marines landed and imposed order. Somali farmers produced enough to feed their countrymen. The Army and Marines left. Somalians are again starving.

Same goes for North Korea.

In the world today, if someone is starving, it is because someone else wants him to starve.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

We used to call them primitive, tribal, possibly barbarian; or kleptocracies or just plain despoties. I notice that despoty is not even in the standard Word dictionary. It is not politically correct. And we seldom teach that rule of law and property security are needed to have high economic growth.

"We are getting to the point where we will have to pay people not to produce power."

<http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-grid-renewables-20131203,0,6231790,full.story>

Roland Dobbins

Dr Pournelle

Star Wars Downunder <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhTn8cjm9ZM#t=11>

The funniest thing about this is that the subtitles are indispensable.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

They certainly are indispensible, and it turns out that I didn’t have subtitles turned on in Firefox so it was unintelligible to me. Now they’re on and it makes sense.

‘Because so few serving in politics have worn their country’s uniform, they have collectively forgotten how to put country before party and self-interest.’

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-restore-conscription-restore-america/2013/11/29/>

—–

Roland Dobbins

A matter of concern since the Roman Republic. The Civil Wars of Marius and Sulla converted Rome from a nation of citizen soldiers to long term professional troops loyal to their officers. The results used to be known to every school kid in America but now I suspect most Harvard undergraduates barely know who Marius was and have only a vague knowledge of Cicero.

Response to Chris Carson

Dr. Pournelle,

Apparently Mr. Carson took umbrage with my letter regarding ACA, specifically with my comment that as a society the United States population did have disdain for people that did not try to take care of themselves (as opposed to people who legitimately cannot take care of themselves). I wish that he would explain why this makes us a "barbaric people"? Why is toleration of sloth a virtue? As to having a virgin continent to exploit, Africa, Russia (Asian and European areas) and South America have at least as many resources that were no better developed 200 years ago than the United States, and yet today they still have a much lower standard of living than the US. For that matter, Europe was exploiting the resources of Asia and Africa and the indigenous people and still didn’t equal the production of the United States. Further, people from these areas still come to the US despite all our faults and generally live better than in their country of origin and they frequently do better than people that are born in the US. I would never say that we don’t have lots of areas to improve, but I don’t think the government’s current direction is doing anything to improve the situation and I still think our best hope is for freedom for people to pursue their own goals. Apparently even Bono agrees. How anyone construes freedom to mean uncharitable or uncaring is boggling to me.

Doug Lewis, MD

I have been looking for a place to use this, and too long has gone past, so it will just have to go here today. I will repeat: the best way to get more of something is to subsidize it, and the best way to get less is to tax it. We tax employment – I am calculating my self-employment tax now – and pay people to be unemployed, extending the time of payment as needed, as well as raising the benefits of being poor as we streamline their delivery by using debit cards and other such gimmicks. I am not sure this is a way to increase employment or decrease welfare recipients.

‘MacGyver’ geezer makes ‘SHOTGUN, GRENADE’ from airport shop tat,

Jerry

A shotgun made from items purchased AFTER passing security in the airport:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/26/madcap_macgyver_builds_shotgun_grenade_from_airport_shop_parts/

Don’t you feel safer now?

Ed

Question about space and temperature

Jerry,

The discussion on starlight and cold reminded me of you once talking about designing spacesuits and cooking more astronauts than any cannibal. The problem, as I recall, was how much heat the human body generates, and how as a vacuum space offers very little to absorb heat and thus doesn’t really have a temperature.

I may have gotten that wrong, but ever since then, I’ve been wondering about what seems to be the typical portrayal in science fiction of space being very, very cold. The discussion on starlight would seem to support that.

How does that fit in with the "temperature" of space?

-Philip

Space has no CONDUCTIVE cooling, and the irradiative environment depends on where you are: about a kilowatt a square meter in sunlight at Earth orbit distance. Radiative cooling works, but you need to design things so that the internal conduction of a device gets the heat to the radiation surface, and that that surface faces the cold of space, not the Sun or a planet. It can get complicated. With the proper type of space activity suit your own sweat will take care of heating, and a coverall can adjust radiative heating/cooling.

Human flesh in the marketplace?

It all depends on whose flesh and how it got there. Vat-grown long pig from pedigreed DNA vs. kidnapping and slaughtering random victims. I can see it now: I ATE EINSTEIN’S BRAIN!!! personally, I could really get into a Kaley Cuoco rump roast. Anyway – A few anarcho-capitalists aside, capitalism does not exist outside of a structure of laws and ethics, so I don’t see how we arrive at human flesh etc. from a capitalist starting point. The only documented cases of widespread cannibalism in the modern world are places like communist China.

Man Mountain Molehill

I will repeat: unregulated capitalism will result in the sale of human flesh in the market place. The question becomes what restrictions allow economic growth without allowing things to go that far; because there are no built in limits to pure economic freedom. Pure freedom without restrictions results in the kind of work described by Hobbes: Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. How to avoid that without giving all power to the State – how to preserve freedom and order, or ordered liberty – used to be the subject matter of American political science. That no longer seems to be the case.

If love of money is the root of evil, perchance love of theory is the root of folly.

Roy Lofquist

The most interesting Pope in the world

Dear Jerry Pournelle:

I write you about Pope Francis, whom I call ‘the most interesting Pope in the world’. This description is not entirely vacuous, for after all Benedict is still in the world. He’s a Pope too, of sorts; or maybe I should call him an ex-Pope, or a Pope Emeritus. I’m not sure what to call Benedict; Popes don’t retire every day, or even most centuries. This, and other curious facts, would normally make Benedict the object of fascinated planetary scrutiny; but almost everyone has forgotten about him, and why? Because Francis is the most interesting Pope in the world.

For what are we to make of a Pope who calls capitalism a new tyranny? Who calls it dehumanizing? Who denounces supply-side economics as unproven and unfair? Who says that inequality kills? Who snarks about ‘sacralized markets’? Is this coming from the Vatican or from Occupy?

I like hearing this, but I am startled to hear it from a Pope. I’m not a Catholic, he’s not my Pope, I’m skeptically minded and I prize my sense of personal independence; so I strive for a certain aloofness. This is difficult in Francis’s case, for he keeps saying such interesting things.

My attitude toward Pope Francis is like my cats’ attitude towards me. I’m not a cat, I’m not the boss of them, they’re wild-minded and they prize their sense of personal independence; so they strive for a certain aloofness. This is difficult in my case, for I keep giving them such yummy treats.

My cats like me despite themselves; similarly I like Francis despite myself. To me he poses a conundrum. A _Pope_ said that?! I suspect that he poses an equal-but-opposite problem for you. A Pope said _that_?!

I write to ask what you think of Pope Francis. I’m sure you too find him interesting.

Sincerely,

Nathaniel Hellerstein

paradoctor@aol.com

I find few surprises in Pope Francis. What you see is what we have. He is a Jesuit superior who chose to name himself after the founder of the Franciscans. As a Jesuit he will uphold the letter of the law and the doctrines of the church, but having taken the name of Francis you may be sure his attention will be more on the condition of the poor.

One can hope that he will learn that the poorest in the United States would be though pretty well off in the slums where he served in South America. He is correct in saying that unrestrained capitalism results in evil; he is incorrect in implying that elimination of capitalism will result in a better life for the poor. Distributism is useful only when there is something to distribute, and Socialism, as Margaret Thatcher observes, works fine until you run out of other people’s money. Given enough assured wealth a number of societies are possible that cannot exist without that assured wealth; and pure charity and good intentions can result in monstrous harm, as documented in The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty by Nina Munk will tell you. I hope someone calls it to the attention of His Holiness.

The Capitalist engine is the best known mechanism for creation of wealth known to human history. Other systems of nationalism can create great fervor, but it generally does not bring about wealth: more likely it brings about destruction. When the mob goes forth in search of bread for the poor, the result is usually burning bakeries and dead bakers.

Jerry,

I was slow to read "polymorhhochromatic"

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/jerrypournelle.c/chaosmanor/

I assume that it means "many changing colors" but I have no clue is to the possible context.

Today is my 25th engagement anniversary. Perhaps I will take my wife out for dinner.

James Crawford=

If you come up with a known definition please let me know: I made the word up to show that you can read “words” that haven’t been invented yet.