Category Archives: Mail

Mail 829 Saturday, June 21, 2014

SUBJ: An amusing experimental cartoon

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3374#comic

Science in the age of _USA Today_ and _People_ magazine.

Cordially,

John

I have bookmarked that site. Thank you.

Jerry:

You wrote:

"I do not believe anyone can put Iraq back together again. Saddam did so for a while, and we had an opportunity to continue that policy without its brutality (and without Saddam’s sons acting like the sons of Septimius Severus). It was possible to continue Western rule of Iraq through the tried and proven practices of client rulers. Saddam’s generals had control of the army; the army knew it could not defeat the United States, but it could control the populace; the elements of client rulers were in place. Were, until Bremer disbanded the armies that could control the population."

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/

Jerry, I would submit that the US had employed the old imperial system of maintaining a network of client rulers in the Middle East for half a century. The first Persian Gulf War was essentially an example of the legions having to discipline a client ruler that had rebelled. Unfortunately; the first gulf war provoked extreme animosity which escalated to the 9-11 attacks. The fact that the hijackers were Saudi Arabian or Kuwaiti citizens rather than Iraqis only confirmed how dangerous the old imperial system was becoming. The near nuclear effects of the weaponized airliners that were used in those attacks combined with the prospect that Middle East client states would obtain nuclear weapons (Pakistan already had nuclear weapons and we later learned was marketing nuclear technology) inspired Bush to seek an alternative strategy. The idea of spreading democracy at the point of a bayonet was essentially liberal ideology dating back to the time of Woodrow Wilson or perhaps it dates back to Napoleon or ancient Athens. However; the only real alternatives were either a campaign of extermination against Muslims or surrender to Islam. Your preferred policy of energy independence is of course only common sense but when combined with isolationism it only delays the decision to either surrender or kill hundreds of millions of people.

I myself now favor a combination of energy independence and extreme isolationism. Thanks to President Obama’s eagerness to not only discredit Bush by abandoning Iraq (Iraq was stable after Bush’s surge) but alienate the Pakistanis whom Bush had persuaded to liberalize their economy, and promote the Arab Spring which was essentially a policy of surrendering the entire Muslim world to jihadists, the world has become far to dangerous for any policy except isolationism. Our European allies have been compelled by their demographic implosion to pursue a policy of appeasement that will lead to their surrender to the Caliphate. Obama has surrendered Africa to the tender mercies of the jihadists. I am clinging to the forlorn hope that observing the brutalities that the Muslims will inflict on native Europeans might inspire a renascence of faith and militaristic patriotism in the US that will be needed to wage a genocidal war against Islam. Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea and the resurgent birth rates that he has inspired are obviously an effort to strengthen Russia in the hopes of surviving the coming storm. Although Russia’s prospects for survival are dubious, Russia rather than Europe should be our ally. China and India, as well as perhaps Japan if they can avoid demographic oblivion, are also our natural allies. Australia, New Zealand and Canada as well as Latin America are irrelevant because they are surrendering to Islam and the demographic implosion.

In the final analysis the US will need to heed the wisdom of Captain Roderick Blaine.

"Conquest is expensive. Extermination is cheap."

James Crawford

I cannot agree that we were practicing anything like competent imperialism at any time in the Middle East. The first Bush War was needless, and would not have happened had there been competent agents in Baghdad to tell Saddam Hussein that Kuwait was off limits at that time: not that we disputed his claim to Kuwait, but we simply could not allow a Baathist regime that close to Saudi Arabia and the other Arab sheikdoms. Why Bus I did not make that clear is not known to me: he had after all been Director of the CIA and had plenty of experience in those matters. Why he relied on April Glaspie, a career Foreign Service Officer, to deliver a message that had to come from the President is not at all clear to me. She should have made it clear that Kuwait was off limits at the time, and that taking Kuwait would be a very serious step. She did not.

For whatever reason, allowing relations with Saddam to get to the point of our having to send in the troops is inexcusable incompetence.

The Second invasion of Iraq was an example of military competence, but then we sent in Bremer, a career Foreign Service Officer, to be proconsul, with utterly disastrous results. Without the Baathist regime and army Iraq could not be governed and anyone with any sense would have known that; but Bremer disbanded the army and the Baathist ruling structure, and the result was both predictable and predicted.

I cannot agree that Iraq was stable at any time after Bremer did that. The US cannot directly rule Iraq, and the surge was needed just to keep enough order to make it easy to get out. We never did rebuild any kind of stability into Iraq, nor could we given that there is no such place as Iraq. We did well with the Kurds, and had the troops been given the proper orders we could have built Shiite and Sunni regimes, all dependent on us for their existence; but we did not do that either. Imperial rule is a long term affair and the American people are not very good at it. The Philippine experience showed that well. We do not really want to train our military to rule without the consent of the governed; there are few places worth the long term costs of doing that.

Afghanistan is another example: We could have gone in, thrown out the Taliban, accepted the thanks of the Afghans, and got out quickly, leaving behind the memory: if you harbor our enemies we are coming, and you will not like the experience. Keep out enemies out of your country.

Conquest is expensive. Extermination is cheap; but not for the United States. An as imperial policy it may be needed; but it is not necessary. The United States has not the stamina or desire for a long term policy of competent empire; and we cannot afford to continue to try incompetent empire.

I read, and agreed, with COL Couvillon’s letter. I wanted to add something to this line:

<.>

That leaves Jordan vulnerable, which in turn threatens Israel.

</>

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/iraq-is-rocking/

A recent article from the Guardian caught my attention; it quotes other sources, including the Associated Press:

<.>

A fighter using a loudspeaker urged the people to join the militant group "to liberate Baghdad and Jerusalem." The Islamic State’s black banners adorned many of the captured vehicles. Some in the crowd shouted "God is with you" to the fighters.

</>

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/13/iraq-crisis-isis-militants-make-new-gains-live-updates

Not only would Israel be vulnerable in the scenario the colonel outlined, it seems ISIS has every intention of attacking Israel. I suspect the promise of attacking Israel would motivate many disenfranchised young men from several nations in the region to sign up and so we could argue this is only a talking point.

But, I do not think it is a stretch of the imagination to say that we’re — likely — not dealing with rational actors. So, let’s say it’s only talking point to recruit people and they have no intention of attacking Israel. What happens when the chips are down? Could they go for it as one last hoorah? Also, let’s consider that ISIS now, allegedly, has access to chemical weapons. Even if ISIS cannot, militarily, attack and "liberate" Israel they might commit atrocities.

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Noted.

Will: ‘Serious as are the policy disagreements roiling Washington, none is as important as the structural distortion threatening constitutional equilibrium.’

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-stopping-a-lawless-president/2014/06/20/377c4d6e-f7e5-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html>

I’m unsure about the wisdom of the lawsuit Will proposes. It seems to me that the Constitution already provides a mechanism for dealing with a rogue President – impeachment – and that trying to utilize the judiciary in the way Will suggests will only lead to further problems down the road.

——–

Roland Dobbins

Lerner Emails 2 + 2

Jerry,

A classic way of finding "lost" emails is in the archives at the other end. The question of the year of course is, were Lois Lerner and the gang of six coordinating with the White House.

I saw a clip of Jay Carney the other day, very smugly asserting that the White House had found no Lerner emails on their end.

Then I just now saw that the White House was made aware six weeks before the Congress that the IRS had definitively lost all its copies of a critical two years’ worth of Lerner+6 emails.

And 2 + 2 added up.

There’s probably not much point in looking at White House (or DOJ) archives for Lerner+6 emails now; they’ve had six weeks to scrub.

But looking for traces of the scrub might prove fruitful. Can’t get them for the crime? Then go after the cover-up. This one, possibly done in some haste, may have left tracks if someone skilled enough gets in and looks, hard, soon.

There may also be tracks on the IRS end, if only circumstantial, in the timing and disposition of the Lerner+6 "disk crashes".

I have trouble remaining calm in the face of the evidence in this matter. Politicizing the IRS is a nuclear weapon. It should never have been used. Now that it has been, the world of US politics has changed.

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Why "modus vivendum"?

I thought vivendum would be in the genitive: vivendi That’s what I remember Miss Benson teaching me, but that was back in ’53 so I may be a bit foggy.

vivendum

Latin[edit <http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=vivendum&action=edit&section=1> ]

Participle[edit <http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=vivendum&action=edit&section=2> ]

vīvendum

1. nominative neuter singular of vīvendus <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vivendus#Latin>

2. accusative masculine singular of vīvendus <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vivendus#Latin>

3. accusative neuter singular of vīvendus <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vivendus#Latin>

4. vocative neuter singular of vīvendus <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vivendus#Latin>

On another note:

re "…but it’s not for sissies…"

My mother used to say, "I now know why they call ’em ‘The Golden Years’; you need a lotta gold to get through ’em."

Gary D. Gross, DDS

I have not seriously read Latin since high school, and I was in error. It should have been Vivendi.

Cruz calls on conservatives to defend religious freedom — at home and abroad <http://news.yahoo.com/cruz-faith-freedom-conference-184056130.html>

image <http://news.yahoo.com/cruz-faith-freedom-conference-184056130.html>

Cruz calls on conservatives to defend religious freedom … <http://news.yahoo.com/cruz-faith-freedom-conference-184056130.html>

Two of the Republican Party’s rising stars opened the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., on Thursday by calling on social …

View on news.yahoo.com <http://news.yahoo.com/cruz-faith-freedom-conference-184056130.html>

It will require a great deal more time and length than I have tonight to comment properly. The United States has always had a common religious base, which for lack of a better term we can call Judeo-Christian principles, the most important of which is submission to a higher power, generally summarized in the Ten Commandments. Without some such agreement our laws can be based only on practical applications as if we understood what we are doing.

Religious freedom does not mean freedom from restraints on actions and behaviors, and even thoughts and lusts. Utterly libertine societies have seldom lasted.

Now, convert light into matter

Jerry,

Thunderstorms do indeed create matter from gamma rays. This was discovered about three years ago. What is special about the experiment described is that we now have a way of accomplishing the feat in a controlled environment. If we can raise the coupling of the gamma rays with the EM field, we can raise the efficiency of the process, creating more matter. If we can raise the energy of the gamma rays, we can create proton-antiproton pairs. If we can capture the positrons and antiprotons, which should not be difficult, and slow them down (which we have already done), we can produce anti-hydrogen.

If we can use the Sun to directly supply the energy and source matter stream for the production of the gamma rays and the creation of the high density EM field, we suddenly have a worthwhile anti-matter production facility. This has direct implications for space exploration.

Kevin L. Keegan

That is pretty much how I see it, but I am not really familiar with the operational requirements.

“This is not a Federal issue, yet the legal reasoning rests upon the specious ‘disparate impact’ penumbra of the (unconstitutional, in my view) ‘equal protection’ clause of the (again, unconstitutional, in my view) Fourteenth Amendment.”

Did we just agree that the constitution is unconstitutional? If so, what underlying principle validates the various parts of the constitution?

–Milton

What I have agreed to is that we ought not seek fresh new rights based on emanations and penumbras. The law ought to have a consistent base.

Does the United States even have a democracy anymore?

Use of photo IDs as a condition of voting is being resisted tooth and toenail by some members of the political class – successfully in many instances. If memory serves, one member of that group bragged that she had voted several times during the 2012 election.

A significant and growing percentage of the voting in the United States is now done using electronic voting machines which don’t even pretend to leave a paper trail.

The increasing sprawl of the voting period from a single day to a period of weeks also increases opportunities for manipulation.

Stalin, I believe it was, said it didn’t matter who voted. What mattered was who counted the ballots.

I would like to see the nation return to physical boxes and paper ballots, with the boxes chained together and to a masonry wall or floor in each polling place, enough polling places to handle the crowds, a single day for voting, and long lasting purple thumb die. Ideally the voting day would be a national holiday as well. Photo IDs showing eligibility to vote would be a necessity.

Those steps might not totally eliminate cheating, but would make it more challenging.

If the integrity of the voting process – eligibility to positive identification to single vote assurance to removal of electronic cheating possibilities – cannot be assured, the United States is an autocracy rather than a democracy or a republic.

Charles Brumbelow

Were it left to me I would try to limit the scope and jurisdiction of laws, so that it takes a different machine in each county; we will not escape political machinations but we can make them much more difficult.

But in the old days the political machines delivered: they filled the pot holes and distributed the sacks of coal. Not they do not. Not they flaunt the spoils which they get by becoming the ruling class.

aging gracefully

Jerry

Just some idle musings.

I am only 64 (that’s just 40 in HEX!!!! ).

But I can relate your experiences in such matters. I worked at university Chemistry Dept. (retired now) and was perpetually surrounded by 20 year olds. I should have felt young, but for some reason they (the students) stayed perpetually 20 year olds,and I just got older.

While most things still work, some (physical condition & bodily functions) are not what they used to be when I was 20 something.

I shudder to think of the historical cultural Inuit version of ObamaCare. When you got too old to keep up or contribute, you got left behind on an ice floe as the nomadic group moved on.

Are we old fogies, curmudgeons, and luddites just excess baggage in our current society now? Think of limited health care resources, and rationed benefits.

In times past, age & wisdom were thought culturally to be related, probably because not many lived to old age.

C’est la vie

High Frequency trading

I’ve just finished the book Flash Boys by Michael Lewis, which goes into the high-frequency trading issue in some depth, and the founding of IEX, (which as I recall got a 60 Minutes item a few months back), as a potential remedy.

The problem is that the brokers are basically front-running orders by virtue of algorithmic trading and fast/short links into the exchanges’ datacenters, which artificially manipulates the stock price. The protagonist of the book, Brad Katsuyama, ends up creating a new exchange with a deliberate propagation delay wired into the process to try and avoid the larger houses’ shenanigans. They literally have 38 miles of optical fiber rolled onto spools in front of the trading engine (http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/06/magazine/06flash3/06flash3-blog427.jpg) to force a 700 us delay into the process which apparently is enough to foul up the HFT computers. The new exchange is now trading roughly 60 million shares daily at this point.

Bob Halloran

There have to be technological solutions, but I do not know which ones are best. And it does not seem to be in the interest of anyone important to find them.

APOD: 2014 June 17 – V838 Light Echo: The Movie

Jerry

Don’t miss the light echo:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140617.html

Video of an expanding supernova.

Ed

Thanks

AI could become a real danger…

Stephen Hawking: AI could be a ‘real danger’ – CNET

http://www.cnet.com/news/stephen-hawking-artificial-intelligence-could-be-a-real-danger/

So… Would that be more properly attributed to random evolution or intelligent design?

Charles Brumbelow

All of which boils down to , “Do you believe in ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ AI, as Penrose and Hawking once debated.

I certainly do not want to build self-replicating robots capable of Lamarckian evolution…

I read this article and decided Nazi officials and Hitler’s own cognitive bias are probably the only reason D-Day went the way it did.

It seems we won by a thread:

“Of the many messages we received,” said Adolf Hitler on June 6th, “there was one that predicted precisely the landing site, with precise day and time. It was this that made me sure it couldn’t be the actual invasion.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/nazi-spy-who-could-have-changed-course-of-d-day-1.1823618

It is certainly an interesting story.

Retaliation for dead soldiers

Dear Jerry:

The killing of prisoner of war has always had a simple solution. Retaliation. During our Civil War Col. Sir Percy Wyndham hung two of Col. John Mosby’s men for being irregulars without uniforms, calling them bandits. Mosby hung six of his and that was the end of that. Brutal, direct and in the current context, most appropriate.

Sincerely,

Francis Hamit

"We’re going to thoroughly vet the public’s opinion on the use of the aerial surveillance platforms."

<http://www.businessinsider.com/raging-hockey-fans-destroy-lapd-drone-2014-6>

———

Roland Dobbins

Luck is the residue of opportunity and design.

— John Milton

On Iraq

You wrote:

<.>

It’s hard to say what policy the US should have now. Since this civil war was predictable and predicted, one hopes that President Obama (or VP Biden) have been thinking about this and have a policy ready to implement.

I have seen no evidence that this is more than a hope.

And now we wait and see. Al-Qaida will kill Shiites. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard will kill Sunni. The Kurds will consolidate and continue their policy of tolerance. At least the Kurds are better off than they were under Saddam.

</>

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/nanotech-singularities-iraq-and-tolerance/

Perhaps, doing nothing and letting them kill one another is the policy. Shakespeare flows in iambic pentameter; every so often || we see a caesura. After all, wasn’t it American policy makers of the period who armed Iran and Iraq, fostering the more than seven years war between them?

It’s possible, but as you say, it seems more like a hope — perhaps a desperate one — that someone has a cool hand and a competent mind at the till.

I’ll share what I think is possible and I doubt it will surprise anyone we communicate with or rouse any serious disagreements. The Kurds will almost certainly get stronger; Turkey will not like that and it will add to the Turkish impetus to restore influence in the Middle East and North Africa. With Libya, Egypt, and other nations restructured and their respective situations normalized, a pan-Arab order seems most unlikely. Egypt was the keystone to that project; now Mubarak is gone and Sisi has more pressing matters to attend.

R.D. Kaplan would, likely, argue that Iranian influence would flow East if Turkey reasserts itself; where else could it flow? This Persian expansion would pressure Pakistan and throw cold water on ISI’s vision for a Greater Pakistan. It might force Sino-Pakistani cooperation, which could push India closer to Japan and, ultimately, the United States. This could also be a time to build the consensus in the Pacific, which is best done by allowing our allies to put in their own work for a while.

Matt, at 1913intel.com, hypothesizes that China would pull back and consider a pre-emptive nuclear strike if conditions in the Pacific continue to escalate because of American policies. I believe that’s possible and we just saw four Russian bombers, capable of carrying nuclear cruise missiles with a range of 1,500 miles, fly within 50 miles of the California coast last week. We would do well to consider a Russian strike in our calculations as well. As an side, our nuclear force is passing through some interesting times as is England’s in 2014.

Another major problem, as you pointed out, is the late unpleasantness in Kosovo and the Russian perception of that campaign with all that entails. Securing Russian cooperation would seem better than not securing it; that basic argument would seem effective with almost anyone.

As Kaplan, MacKinder, and Spykman all argue, what happens in the heartland will have profound geopolitical consequences. Let’s hope it’s not amateur night on our side of the pond because the stakes are much higher than I believe most of the general public would suspect and I’m not sure that my vision goes much further than theirs. And the fallout of these events, likely, extends beyond any reasonable span of time where one would hazard an estimate of the future.

To use a billiards metaphor for the geopolitical context; someone racked the balls in the triangle and that noise we just heard is the balls breaking.

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Who rules to the East controls the heartland. Who rules the heartland controls the world island. Who rules the world island controls the world.  Mackinder may not be much read any more, and technology is changing many principles, but it is still something to think about.

The Answer to Seattle’s Minimum Wage

Dr. Pournelle,

After a bit of a hiatus, I found your site again. It’s amazing what one will forget after parking a Subaru in his short term memory.

As you most likely know, Seattle has set the minimum wage within its confines to $15.00 an hour. One company has come up with a solution for fast food restaurants. An automated hamburger making machine.

I thought you’d enjoy the irony:

http://www.gizmag.com/hamburger-machine/25159/

Exitus acta probat,

Douglas Knapp

Raise minimum wages enough and every job that can be automated will be automated, and many of those that cannot be automated simply will not be done. That includes the entry level jobs which are apprenticeships for developing work habits.

But then we all know that.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Mail 825 Friday, May 23, 2014

NSA and commercial espionage

They claim they don’t do it – I have my doubts.

The Chinese government does, and they’re not going to stop. Can we

live with a situation where the Chinese get to steal from Toyota and we can’t ? Obviously that’s not going to fly.

So the NSA will get into the business of industrial espionage, not so much because they’re incredibly talented, more because they have huge resources and get to break the law without fear of consequences..

Politics/contributions will dictate which corporations get access.

Of course no future Administration would ever use these powers for blackmail, because that would be wrong. On the other hand, the subjects for blackmail are getting pretty thin – at this point, only saying something politically incorrect could shame an American.

Gregory Cochran

And the political correctness smear is the worst of all. It is only necessary to accuse someone of the Thoughtcrime of racism – without regard to what they have done, and often paying no attention to what they have said, just what they have thought. And of course a joke told in a bar ten years ago can now haunt someone the rest of her life.

And the NSA becomes industrial espionage team as part of our national defense. Alas, what is the alternative? But it sounds like the Cold War all over again. With War grows government and bureaucracy.

Those not familiar with Dr. Cochrane might find this page interesting:

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/cochran/overclocking.html

His views on overclocking the human brain are both original and compelling.

The BUFF gets new avionics

http://www.wired.com/2014/05/boeing-b52-bomber-upgrade/

All glory to the BUFF!

Phil Tharp

My first job in the aerospace business was assignment to the Bomber Weapons Unit, Human Factors and Reliability Unit. Our immediate task was redesign of the control of the Electronic Counterweapons system, and completing the task of bringing the tail gunner in from his isolated past in the back of the airplane to the main cabin. That was in 1955, as the B-52 was going operational.

In the original design and the first operational models of the B-52, the tail gunner was in his own compartment in the back of the airplane. In order to bail out he had to in effect blow the back end out of the airplane, and the sequence then drive his chair on a rail out through the hole in the back of the plane. The rest of the ejection sequence was essentially the same as the regular ejection sequence, with the lap and shoulder belts opening, the airman falling away from the seat, and automatic opening of the parachute. Pilots were reluctant to order a bailout, because while it was theoretically possible to fly the plane in and land with the cabin ejection seats – navigates, bombardier, electronic countermeasures operator, and even the co-pilot – having been activated, control of the airplane was thought to be extremely difficult if the rear seat ejection happened. There hadn’t been much actual experience with this for obvious reasons. The general consensus among Stratofortress (B-52 was successor to the Boeing Flying Fortress, and the Boeing passenger airliner was the Stratoliner; the common service name for the B-52 was the BUFF, standing for Big Ugly Flat Fu****) was that the tail gunner station was a death trap, and he’d do better to ride it in cause he was never going to get out.

The tail gun was the only defensive firepower the Stratofortress had. It relied on other countermeasures for more sophisticated attacks, but those were not effective against the idiot attack – get on her tail, hang back there, and chew her up with guns. The Russians had a lot of day fighters in their inventory, and while they were no threat to the B-52 in high altitude night attacks, they would be against mid and low level daytime attacks. The tail gun was intended to stop the idiot attack by killing the idiot. (Later, long after I left the project, two different B-52 tail gunners brought down MiGs over North Viet Nam, the first tail gunners to kill an enemy aircraft since the Korean War.

It was decided to bring the tail gunner into the main cabin, where he sat in a rear facing seat with an electronic console and a video screen connected to a targeting camera in the rear of the aircraft. The ejection seat was essentially the same as that of the pilot and co-pilot and needed no redesign. Our job was to maximize the video control system. We also got to play with some alternate tail gun weapons. This was, after all, the Human Factors and Reliability Group. It was more an operations research job than one for an aviation psychologist.

I soon moved on from that assignment to testing space suits and human capabilities under high temperature conditions, but I grew rather fond of the BUFF. I’ll have to see if I can arrange to get in on a test flight of the new systems just to see what she looks like with colored flat careens rather than the old green bottle screens. I expect many of the instruments will change as well. By now the BUFF is very likely to be much older than any crewman who flies her, with the possible exception of some of the teach sergeant ECM operators. Tail gunners were generally expected to be promoted out of that assignment.

Another reason for moving the tail gunner inside was the decision to train SAC B-52 crews to do low altitude penetration missions as part of a SIOP – Single Integrated Operational Plan – that called for the first wave of BUFFs to go in low taking out any air defenses that locked in on them. The problem was that the BUFF wasn’t designed for high speed low altitude flight, and the tail would swing from side to side in an eleven foot arc. This was stressful to the airplane, but she could take that; the problem was that the tail gunner was useless at those altitude. He was so busy hanging on for dear life that he hadn’t the ability to observe and aim his guns.

Anyway, I’ll probably never see a color flat screen in a B-52 cockpit, but perhaps there will be pictures. She’s a great old bird, even if at her age she does tend to be a huge number of parts flying in loose formation. I wonder what version of Windows she’ll get.

I note in the article that it says that in Cold War days there was at least one B-52 armed and airborne at all times. I will leave it to your imagination as to what her mission was. There was also a KC-135 full of fuel to accompany her. There was also another airplane, an KC-135 without tanks but filled with electronics in the air. This was Looking Glass, which contained a USAF Lieutenant General or higher officer, and which did not land until its successor was safely off the ground and at altitude. Looking Glass was part of the command and control system; In the event that both National Command Center and SAC Command at Offutt AFB in Nebraska were out of communications with the SAC command network to the missile and flight bases, Looking Glass was in control of the strategic nuclear weapons and could order their launch. This was to prevent a decapitation attack: kill national command authority with a sneak attack, then launch a counterforce attack against missile and air bases with hundreds to thousands of ICBM’s, confident in the knowledge that the US could not order a retaliation before the counterforce attack removed our ability to retaliate. It all seems like bad dreams now, but that is the sort of thing that we worried about in those days, when B-52 Wings waited at numbered Air Force Bases with the crews sleeping out by the airplanes, and missile officers sat deep underground waiting for orders no one wanted to hear. The missile operators never got a launch command. The B-52’s did more than once. The Emergency War Orders would come in, and crews would rush to the airplanes, and the Wing would take of on its way to the rendezvous points where they would meet the KC-135 fuel planes – and would receive final orders to complete the mission. None ever got those final orders and the Failsafe plan was that without that final order, you turned around and went home. The novel Red Alert and the movie Dr. Strangelove, and other “Failsafe” movies had it the other way: unless the BUFFs got orders to turn back, they were to complete their missions. This was not the way it worked. Had it been we would have lost a number of airplanes, since the KC-135’s would pump everything they had into the BUFFS, saving fuel for five minutes of flight time before they were dead stick over the Arctic Ocean – over the North Pole, in some cases.

Fortunately it never got that far before the recall orders. Flying a KC-135 for SAC wasn’t as glamorous as being crew on a BUFF, but every man aboard knew that if this was the big one, they wouldn’t be coming home. The chances of getting down intact weren’t all that bad, and an empty tanker can float for a long time – but who was going to pick them up? Under those circumstances the submarines had their missions, and rescuing crews from downed tankers wasn’t as important as firing their own missions or intercepting Soviet missile subs…

I see I got carried away into a ramble.

"There’s a complete lack of motivation among many of my pupils – these gadgets are really destroying their ability to learn. They’re so used to the instant buzz which you can get with these games and gadgets that they find it really hard to focus on anything which isn’t exciting."

"We’re finding that, for many children, when they begin school, it’s the first time they’ve been told what they can’t do – as opposed to simply being left to do what they like."

"Their response is to really act up and to be aggressive – because they’re not used to any controls, and because these games have given them the idea that violence is the answer to every problem."

<http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-27513174>

——-

Roland Dobbins

I think there’s more to this story. Yes, computers can be a distraction and addicting to certain personalities, and some kids find trivial computer games more important than learning. Perhaps many do. But some find them a source of information they would never otherwise have, and some will discover the Kahn Academy and learn things their own teachers are incapable of teaching. I don’t think we really know the effects of the computer revolution on education, and I would not put a lot of confidence in those who think they do.

A side effect of the computer age impacting publishing

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/amazon-escalates-its-battle-against-hachette/?_php=true&_type=blogs&hp&_r=0

A reduction in the number of distributors of a particular product can cause a limitation in access to products that are deemed to be "offensive" or if there is an economic incentive. Of course that can happen with anything, but the larger internet distributors magnify the effect.

This and other such matters are being discussed in dead earnest by Science Fiction Writers of America, the Authors Guild, and other writers organizations, and I presume by many others. One problem is that Amazon has done its groundwork, and has built a structure that it will take any competitor a fair amount of time and money to match before they can compete. In my case I get a reasonable income from eBook sales, but of that, 90% comes from Amazon, and only 10% from all its competitors combined. Amazon is the 800 lb. gorilla here. I have to say that Amazon has acted very fairly with authors: three months after an eBook is posted on Amazon, they begin to pay monthly royalties, and they continue to pay monthly, not just after credible threat of lawsuit.

Of course they pay it to the publisher. Now if that publisher – the one who posted it on Amazon – is me or my agent, as it is whenever our contracts allow that, the money comes directly to me. If it goes to one of the Big Five publishers, they collect the money, and collect the money, and collect the money, and after a year they send a check for the amounts collected during the period of one year to six months ago; then they wait six months to send any more. Sorry. I’m getting off the subject. But the point is that Amazon has publicly said that one of their goals in the book selling business is to keep authors happy. I do not believe that any of the Big Five publishers has that as a goal.

It would be better if Amazon had real competition, but I am not certain where that will come from. It took them a long time to build the structure they have now; and pressure on competitors from their stockholders will be for early profit and against any long term investment strategy. Of course Amazon is under much the same pressure….

Tightening consensus

The case of the San Onofre nuclear power station is relevant. 1.7 nuclear gigawatts, 100 percent from one of the two large reactors and 700 MW from the other, would mean 250 tonnes per year of uranium-mining if they were CANDUs, maybe 260 or 270 with the ordinary water coolant. That’s $26 million a year. Equivalent natural gas is $450 million a year, and at a 12.5 percent royalty rate, government’s take is 56 million dollars.

So in the USA, as in every highly fossil-fuel-taxing country, the nuclear regulator doesn’t have a good side. Not for the industry. In the USA, a regulator might think, never mind a few tens of millions for my paymaster, that much gas is quite likely to *kill* someone, so everyone’s safer if we let San Onofre run; our people *at* San Onofre assure us of that.

But that kind of thinking isn’t allowed! The regulator’s charter requires it to consider nuclear plant safety in a vacuum, and maximize it at any cost in reduced production no matter how much damage the alternatives thus promoted do. In their "Prevented Mortality" paper* Kharecha and Hansen find nuclear power to have saved 1.84 million people and, independently of that, kept 64 gigatonnes of CO2 out of the air and the ocean.

They don’t estimate the prevented fossil fuel tax revenue and divide it by the prevented mortality, but I do, and the result is a few million dollars per life.

Your belief that the consensus on fossil fuels’ effect on the planet’s heat balance and on the ocean’s pH is tightening for some other reason than being right puts you in the same camp as Helen Caldicott et al.: believers in a civil servants’ conspiracy to reduce civil service headcount.

Interesting talk, well transcribed, at http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2014/05/tedx-talk-should-we-trust-climate-models/ .

* http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es3051197 .

G.R.L. Cowan

I don’t believe that the Iron Law of Bureaucracy is a conspiracy. I think it is a law of nature. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

VA and IHS health care 

As a veteran I abhor what is happening at the VA, as do most Americans. It is a testament to the failure of big bureaucratic organizations and their penchant for not just eschewing small and agile management process but rewarding the expansion of bureaucracy.

To further illustrate the failure of dispensing medical care this way, the media would do well to look at the ludicrous organization of the Indian Health Service (IHS). My wife, children and grandchild receive their care through this system. The wait times for appointments (a month or more for eye or dental appointments, only to have them canceled after taking a day off and driving 70 miles to the IHS facility) , long lead times for major procedures (my wife waited one year for a hip replacement), to having to wait hours for prescriptions to be filled.

As the ACA moves forward we can look forward to seeing this creep into our health care. While claims are made that our health care is not ‘government run’ apologists fail to mention the huge amount of new regulations regarding what are approved procedures and medications. Incentives for private industry are not enhances by the ACA…quite the opposite. Liberals want to move to single payer and ultimately to government run health care. One only needs to look to the VA and the IHS to see how badly the government does at delivering health care.

Tracy

The VA is also subject to the Iron Law, ( http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html    ) although fortunately physicians do not easily get sucked in to the bureaucratic system. It takes too much dedicated work to become a doctor for that to look attractive. But of course the control of the VA by physicians is always threatened by the growing bureaucracy, which grows as the number of clients grows.

There have been several relevant articles in the Wall Street Journal on this and related subjects. One

The Bureaucrat Sitting on Your Doctor’s Shoulder

The bond of trust between patient and physician has always been the essential ingredient in medicine, assuring that the patient receives individual attention and the best possible medical care. Yet often lost in the seemingly endless debate over the Affordable Care Act is how the health-care bureaucracy, with its rigid procedures and regulations, undermines trust and degrades care. In my pediatric ophthalmology practice, I have experienced firsthand how government limits a doctor’s options and threatens the traditional doctor-patient bond.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304198504579570231173457524?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304198504579570231173457524.html

is quite relevant although not addressed to the VA itself. There have been a number of articles by physicians concerned with what’s happening to VA.

See also

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304479704579575832678028774?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304479704579575832678028774.html#mod=todays_us_opinion

Class of 2014

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I believe you will find this column, evidently written with an acid-filled pen, by a prof at Yale to be most insightful and entertaining.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-05-15/dear-class-of-2014-thanks-for-not-disinviting-me

"The literary critic George Steiner, in a wonderful little book <http://www.amazon.com/Nostalgia-Absolute-CBC-Massey-Lecture/dp/0887845940> titled "Nostalgia for the Absolute,” long ago predicted this moment. We have an attraction, he contended, to higher truths that can sweep away complexity and nuance. We like systems that can explain everything. Intellectuals in the West are nostalgic for the tight grip religion once held on the Western imagination. They are attracted to modes of thought that are as comprehensive and authoritarian as the medieval church. You and your fellow students — and your professors as well; one mustn’t forget their role — are therefore to be congratulated for your involvement in the excellent work of bringing back the Middle Ages."

Respectfully,

Brian P.

There is something seriously wrong with our higher education system. But we all knew that…

Disclaimers on Bolts by dolts

Jerry,

I was ordering some bolts online, and noted this disclaimer <http://www.boltdepot.com/Product-Details.aspx?product=16107> on the spec sheet:

"WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and/or birth defects or other reproductive harm."

Yes, even stainless steel bolts may kill you or yours, we are warned.

Is it any wonder that people are skeptical of ingredients in vaccines when we are constantly told that everything is poison in any concentration or composition?

Perhaps the cost of proving the products are "safe" was so high that it was just easier to put the disclaimer on everything and be done.

I will err on the side of caution and not eat any of the bolts I bought, though.

Cheers,

Jeff D

Good advice. And never set the cat on fire…

List of all effects of Global Warming

Just in case you haven’t seen this…

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

is a concise list of the claims of the consequences of global warming (aka climate change, aka climate disruption).

It’s a wonder we’re still here!

Sincerely,

John Bresnahan

Are you sure we are? Perhaps all the poisons have put us into a dream rich coma…

Study: Young Black Children Drown At Far Higher Rates

<.>

Black children ages 5 to 19 drown in swimming pools at a rate more than five times that of white children, the research found. That suggests a lot of blacks are not learning to swim, said the lead author, Dr. Julie Gilchrist of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

</>

http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2014/05/16/study-young-black-children-drown-at-far-higher-rates/

The water must be racist. 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I recall when I was growing up, most of my friends could swim, but few of the tenant kids could swim. Of course there wasn’t much swimming to be done, except in the big creek that ran through our land, and it had a lot of snags. Not fast water, but opaque and muddy, and no place to learn to swim. I learned in a kid’s pool in Davis Park across the street from where I lived K-3 in Memphis, and at a couple of summer camps. There was no such opportunity for black kids in legally segregated Memphis. There was at least one black public swimming pool. I don’t know if there were any white public swimming pools; I never went to one. But there was Rainbow Lake and East End, private pools (again white only) not too far away by street car.

But legal segregation is long over, so I would suppose that the opportunity to learn to swim is much more likely among black children now. I have no idea of the importance of learning in the black community. When I was growing up I don’t think I knew anyone among my friends who couldn’t swim. Certainly no boys.

Joe McCarthy

I have mixed feelings about this guy. The press regarding him is not trustworthy IMO, either the pro’s or con’s. I DO think the Red infiltration into our government was greater than we realized at the time, but maybe not so much as the Senator did.

It is plausible to me that Senator McCarthy’s drinking and overreaching was a symptom of his frustration at not being able to get people to listen.

You were old enough at the time and were active in politics then, right? Can you reflect back on those times and give an opinion?

The McCarthy period happened while I was in the Army and after when I was an undergraduate. I had never heard of him when I was in the Army. As an undergraduate I was actively opposed to him. A number of my friends were obsessed with the hearings.

The nature of the threat that McCarthy was drawing attention to wasn’t easily discussed because everyone I knew hated him, and that was pretty well the attitude I experienced through college and mostly in graduate school. My political attitudes took a great swing during that period.

None of that is relevant. But much later I met and was befriended by William F. Buckley and Russell Kirk, as well as Stefan Possony, and I got a different picture. Kirk tended to be contemptuous of the man. Possony thought him a detriment to his own cause: the threat was real, but McCarthy was making things harder for intelligence people. And finally Bill Buckley wrote The Red Hunter, a part fiction part biography book that I think does the best job of imbedding McCarthy in his times of anything I have seen yet. It exists in Kindle format http://www.amazon.com/Redhunter-Novel-Based-Senator-McCarthy-ebook/dp/B002ZDJZQK/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid= and of course there are printed copies available. If you want a picture of that time that tries to be accurate, I recommend this.

Now the Department of Agriculture wants armed agents

Jerry:

Yet another agency arms itself.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/05/14/Dept-Of-Agriculture-Orders-Submachine-Guns-With-30-Round-Magazines

‘ the Dept. of Agriculture wants the guns to have an "ambidextrous safety, semiautomatic or 2 round [bursts] trigger group, Tritium night sights front and rear, rails for attachment of flashlight (front under fore group) and scope (top rear), stock collapsible or folding," and a "30 rd. capacity" magazine."’

It’s nice to know our tax dollars are being used so wisely.

Doug Ely

“Everybody’s getting paid, but Raheem still can’t read.”

<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/19/140519fa_fact_russakoff?currentPage=all>

—–

Roland Dobbins

Yes. Precisely.

Spurious correlations:

http://www.tylervigen.com/

I like:

Worldwide non-commercial space launches

correlates with

Sociology doctorates awarded (US)

r = 0.78915

also:

Per capita consumption of chicken (US)

correlates with

Total US crude oil imports

r = 0.899899

Paradoctor

Yes, it’s always amusing to find high correlations between obviously unrelated trends, and try to figure out if there really is a common basis for them. Usually there isn’t. After all, if a correlation has statistical significance at the 5% level (usually considered pretty good in the social sciences) then 5 times out of a hundred it would happen by chance. And if there are thousands of such pairings…

What ended much of the interest in J. B. Rhine’s Extra Sensory Perception experiments – often involving a deck of cards each of which had a figure like a wavy line or a start or a circle, etc.; the “sender was to look at the car and think it hard, while the receiver drew the symbol on an answer paper.. The drawn symbols were then compared to those actually “sent”. In a large number of cases it was found that the results were far too close to be chance – or so it was concluded.

But if there is one chance in a thousand of a certain result, and there are two thousand repetitions of the experiment, the chance of getting three or four of those improbable results is quite high. And in its time the Rhine experiments were being done ten times a day by a dozen students at hundreds of college campuses….

The Right To Privacy

Jerry,

I could feel the alarm in Mr. Maher’s op-ed piece on the right to privacy. But we have to be careful in our analysis of this situation. The right to privacy that Maher refers to is a right against unsanctioned State intrusion into our personal lives. It requires the State to obtain warrants before it can target an individual, tracking movements and statements. That right places no restrictions on what one private individual does concerning another private individual.

Individuals have been ratting out each other ever since people stopped wandering around looking for food every day, as soon as the community enlarged beyond the family and included the notion of neighbors. For most of that time, what happened to Sterling would have resulted in a ‘she-said, he-said’ splash in the local papers. Now, however, we have ubiquitous audio and video recording devices that are easily concealed and so there is absolute proof what was said and no recourse to deny the conversations.

Pointing out the long history of ratting and the impact of modern technology does not, of course, sanction the act of ratting. Is it wrong? Sure, unless what one is ratting amounts to plans for illegal activities. Then the ratting is encouraged and the ratter becomes a hero instead of a goat.

Was Sterling’s privacy violated? Yes. Were his rights violated? No. The State had nothing to do with it. It was a private affair made publicly ugly by a private individual.

Kathleen Parker’s take on the situation is extreme, but her position does point out the need for decorum. Depending upon what you have to loose, some things are best not said. To anyone. At any time. But, this has always been true, too. We all have thoughts best not shared because they endanger one’s relationship with one’s wife, or children, or best friend, or work, or society at large. Any thought shared will eventually out. Count on it. So don’t share it.

Sterling violated that precept at his peril and it cost him.

Kevin L. Keegan

Then of course you have Fred… http://www.fredoneverything.net/LaudableRacism.shtml

Belmont Club » The Day Obama’s Presidency Died

This is an absolutely stunning analysis of Benghazi and the Arab Spring.

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/05/11/the-day-obamas-presidency-died/?singlepage=true

James Crawford=

Japanese space solar power

Hi Jerry

Of possible “green” technologies space solar power always seemed interesting to me. Awhile back we looked into a project that involved sending microwave power. It didn’t work out but I did run across what the Japanese were doing. It looks like they are still at it.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/how-japan-plans-to-build-an-orbital-solar-farm

I got my Costco hearing aids. I’m very happy with them. Thanks for the tip.

I was going to say something else. But it went away. Old age. 😉

Andy

Space based solar power is capital intensive but it doesn’t contend with day/night cycles or weather, and operates nearly 24 hours a day 365 days a year. It is still an economic contender for energy production.

Offshored jobs returning…

With respect, there are several alternative interpretations:

1. This is all a lie (WMD in Iraq, anyone?).

2. If offshored jobs are returning because American wages have collapsed, so what? Being ‘globally competitive’ with Bangladesh is no great accomplishment if you are paying Bangladeshi wages.

Recall: adjusting for inflation, American wages have collapsed. If in 1980 Americans with IQs of 90 could get $20/hour (adjusted for inflation) and in 2010 Americans with IQs of 110 can get $10/hour, this is effectively more than a halving of wages.

3. If a company exports 400 jobs to low-wage India, and then brings back 80 low-wage jobs to the United States, BUT THERE ARE STILL HUNDREDS OF LOW-WAGE INDIANS WORKING ON THE PRODUCT, this has nothing to do with automation.

Automation does not cause low wages. Automation is a reaction to high wages. Duh.

globus pallidus XI

Well of course automation is a reaction to high wages and restrictive union rules. But once the investment is made, a number of jobs are lost forever…

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Mail 824 Sunday, May 11, 2014

You were ahead of your time, Jerry –

I recall that you once backed an idea for sending water back up into the mountains.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/water-flows-uphill-maybe-california-drought

Of course, they’re not using recycled water, and it can’t work in both directions at the same time except incidentally. It is still subject to state approval, so they may manage to kill the idea yet.

–Gary P

It has long been clear to me that LA needs to reprocess its sewage and runoff water – it does that very well now – and pump it up into the Angeles Crest to runs down refilling the water table as it goes.

: Useless population

Hi Dr. Pournelle,

I’m not convinced that you have the right of the argument when you say that half the population will inevitably be economically useless. Perhaps there will be sufficient government incentives and disincentives to encourage indolence in half the population, but that’s not the same thing. As a thought experiment, think about the U.S. agricultural sector that you use as an example of the phenomenon.

It’s true that farm labor is a very small fraction of what it was at the beginning of the 20th century. But that reduction is a result of increased productivity through the employment of many technologies, from tractors to vacuum-packed breakfast cereal. Perhaps it would be more reasonable to add back in the employment at firms ranging from John Deere, to General Mills, to Frigidaire, to Gunderson rail cars and manufacturers of shipping containers, to financiers who lubricate the process of putting the capital investment in place. All of a sudden, there’s a lot more people employed in bringing you your Wheaties and orange juice.

Now, it’s true that those firms don’t solely service the agricultural sector—their profits are driven in large part by the rest of the industrial (and other) sectors. That is to say, the productivity of today’s agricultural sector is largely a by-product of the industrial sector. It seems to me that it’s not so much of a reach to say that productivity increases in the manufacturing sector will continue to be driven by innovations (and employment) in the technology sector, biotech sector, transportation, energy, etc. Because it takes time and capital to automate any task, and it always seems that tasks pop up faster than we can get together the time and capital, it seems to me that there will be jobs aplenty for those with a good work ethic and enough intelligence to either mop a floor or to tidy a room in preparation for the floor-mopping robot.

Think of it another way—at one time, one-third of the population was employed in feeding the other two-thirds. Later on, 1/3 was employed providing rail transportation to the other 2/3. Later on, (if memory serves) 1/3 was employed building cars, car parts, or roads for the other 2/3. Perhaps someday 1/3 will be employed capturing energy for the other 2/3.

It’s true that my optimistic take pre-supposes an educational system that equips all but the developmentally disabled with a good work ethic and the ability to do basic arithmetic and to read and comprehend instructions. But that gets back to the government incentives I mentioned. (As an aside, at one time I contracted with a foundation that employed the developmentally disabled to do part-kits for a product, so I don’t think even that is a real disqualification.)

The one fly in the ointment that I see is something that I left out of my “1/3” progression. The employment picture has gotten muddier lately, but out of the non-agriculture, non goods-producing population, one-third is employed either by government or by health and social services (which is difficult to separate from government in the official statistics). Perhaps this is an aberration, and not a harbinger, but I think it’s the source of much of our current ennui.

http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm <http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm>

Neil

The key to your statement is “good work ethics.” Given present trends, I’d say we were moving more to “sensitivity to entitlements”. I am not sure where good work ethics will be learned. I suspect that given incentives, freedom, and decent work ethics we would have a brilliant renaissance, but I fear that is more a hope than a prediction.

Understand that my definition of useless is an economic term, not a moral judgment. Those who produce less than they consume over their lifetimes generally have contributed little to the civilization.  Of course ‘contribute’ is subject to discussion. I sing for my supper, but I don’t produce very much in the usual sense.

ADA

Hi Jerry

You wrote that “The Department of Defense tried to get into the act with its invention of ADA but like all projects operated by committees, it grew and added features and never quite got there.”

ADA itself may not be much used but a lot of it lives on in Oracle’s PL/SQL language: http://www.dba-oracle.com/concepts/programming_pl_sql.htm

“Oracle PL/SQL was based on the ADA programming language which was developed by the Department of Defense to be used on mission critical systems. Although not a ‘sexy’ language like Java or C, ADA is still being develop and used for applications such as aircraft control systems. ADA is a highly structured, strongly typed programming language that uses natural language constructs to make it easy to understand. The PL/SQL language inherited these attributes making PL/SQL easier to read and maintain than more cryptic languages such as C.”

As a PL/SQL Software Engineer myself over the last few years I have written tens of thousands of lines of PL/SQL and I can confirm that it is widely used around the world, by most of the organizations that use Oracle databases, and is a living language that is actively updated by Oracle with new features released most years.

Having, in my time worked with Assembly language, COBOL, C, Forth, PL/SQL and other languages, in my opinion PL/SQL is one of the better development languages. Unfortunately because it’s only supplied as part of Oracle’s database offering, with very little support for using it for anything other than building and executing SQL queries it’s never going to be the language of choice for general software development.

Best wishes

Paul Dove

I was very hopeful about ADA and hoped that it would become wildly popular, but I fear the committee nature of its design, no matter how well meant, doomed it.

Compilers for number crunching

Hi Jerry.

Coincidentally, I stumbled across this article today just after the latest round of discussions on compilers got started on Chaos Manor. It focuses on FORTRAN and some up-and-coming computer languages:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/05/scientific-computings-future-can-any-coding-language-top-a-1950s-behemoth/

From personal experience, FORTRAN is still the dominant language in both oceanography/atmospheric science and astrophysics…

Cheers,

Mike Casey

When I was keynote speaker to the Grand Challenges in Supercomputing Conference some decades ago, I took the opportunity to question people who used supercomputers on just what they did. I generally got the answer, “I write 120,000 lines of FORTRAN and try not to go mad.” Apparently that’s still a fair description of what some Supercomputer people do to this day.

FORTRAN can be a confusing language. It will compile nonsense including type changes and confusing data with program instructions, and allows a number of coding tricks that save lines of code and memory at the expense of understanding, but there are also programs like RATFOR (RATional FORtran) and its descendants and improvements: these are precompilers that enforce strong data typing and a degree of structuring forcing the programmer to think about the logic of the program before handing the whole mass to the compiler. I have written some FORTRAN programs including an expected value model of a nuclear exchange of ballistic missiles, and it is powerful. I’d still rather use C-BASIC for the kinds of work I tend to do with computers, but I have to confess that I’m likely to use Python if I just need something quick and dirty. But then I try to avoid programming when possible and lately I have been very successful at doing that.

I suspect that for really complex systems like climate and complex flows, FORTRAN is the weapon of choice to this day. I know that when I worked with nuclear weapon designers, most of their work was done in FORTRAN.

Subject: Cutting-edge research still universally involves Fortran; a trio of challengers wants in.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/05/scientific-computings-future-can-any-

coding-language-top-a-1950s-behemoth/

An interesting article.

Fr. N.

Coding for dollars

Dr. Pournelle,

I enjoy your occasional discussions on software coding, and agree with many of your points — but at the cost of possibly being boringly repetitive, I must stick with the position that the language is possibly the least important factor of the components of generating good software. Seriously, it is the systematic approach (or lack thereof) by the coder(s) and their organization. In my recently departed systems engineering career, I’ve witnessed lousy software written in low-level languages (or machine code) by coders with the reputation for a high degree of skill, and excellent code written in loosely typed, interpreted languages by relatively inexperienced programmers. The differences distinguishing the two extremes have always been the developer’s understanding of requirements (including security requirements), the degree of code review, integration testing, and configuration management.

Languages do make a difference in the sheer amount of good, verified code that can be generated by a given group with a given skill set. Strongly typed languages have all the advantages you list, including the ease with which the code is inspected and debugged, as well as the ease with which the project is staffed. However, if testing is given short shrift a good language is as likely IMO to produce poor results as a project run using machine code.

There is some excellent and useful software written, by a single person, much of it in assembly language, in Spinrite by Steve Gibson. I became aware of him and the software indirectly via a reference from you to TWiT. His attention to detail and commitment to thorough testing by a team set his work apart from others. He posts a lot of freeware and security utilities, along with a lot of other good information on his site at grc.com.

I do enjoy the discussion, and look forward to your comments and those of your other readers. I also am continuing to enjoy reading of your recovery and increased activity.

-d

I don’t disagree with what you say. What Niklaus Wirth has spent a lifetime trying to accomplish is to get programmers to think a lot more about what they are trying to accomplish before they begin to write code, and to design languages that require you to do that.

Wirth’s view of ADA, incidentally, was that was based on bad principles from the beginning because it had code Exception operations (so that if you coded yourself deep into a hole you could get out by declaring and exception). “They don’t know how to program if they need those,” he told me once, I think over sandwiches at my kitchen table. I had brought him and his wife to the house when he was in town for a conference, and I recall showing him the DOS game Wing Commander: he was greatly impressed with it (as was I).

re Substandard Programming Practices and Their Effect on Our Daily Lives and the Catastrophe Waiting Just Around the Corner:

I think it is quite unfair of your correspondent to dismiss the complexity problem as nonsense. The complexity of systems has indeed become enormous.

That is no excuse for poor design and implementation, but even with good and thorough design and high-quality implementation, what we expect from a system these days is far, far more than what it used to be, and hence a huge amount of added complexity.

I know whereof I speak. I have been a software engineer for 42 years now, and have worked for Symantec and Google as well as for several not so well-known companies.

It is easy to say "poor choice of programming tools" but in reality there is little choice available – unless you want to re-educate your workforce, you use the tools they know.

There are, of course, plenty of examples of the problems Mr. Holmes cites, but there have always been inferior products in the marketplace, and a marketplace that changes as rapidly as computing has more than its fair share.

But it is not universally so, and the discipline of software engineering is advancing (albeit slowly). The most hopeful signs I see are a greatly increased use of unit tests and Test-Driven Development (write the tests *first*, then test the code as you write).

To me, the design and test aspects are more important than the implementation language, but we are not yet completely done with the language wars. The most interesting new language (for me anyway) is the "go" language. At least one of its designers was a student of Wirth’s. The language itself seems to address my biggest concern with existing languages. (Their complexity! The C++ book from its principle designer is huge, and very difficult for mere mortals to fully understand.) Hopefully go will become a major programming language that can challenge C++.

While problems such as Mr. Holmes cites are all too common (I have gone through several routers in search of a decent one for my home installation), there is hope, and there *are* companies who are doing what could reasonably be called software engineering – they design, they test (in multiple ways) and they apply the lessons learned from failures. But we do have to learn to deal with complexity in a far better way than we do now. I currently work for Panasas, a computer storage company. I can tell you that the level of complexity in a modern hard drive is truly frightening. Some days it seems like a miracle that they work at all. Then we take these hugely complex components and assemble them into systems containing hundreds or thousands of them, connected together by super-complex networking systems. So it goes. If someone does not do their work correctly, then lots of bad stuff can happen.

The best answer I know of to keep vendors of consumer equipment honest is on-line ratings and reviews. Use them to help you buy, and review the products you do buy (positive or negative – both are important).

On another topic, a quick recommendation of two webcomics:

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2000-06-12

http://www.widdershinscomic.com/chapters-2/

Enjoy.

A. Chris Barker

Subj: Languages for Reliable Programs: Don’t Forget Go!

I think you’ll find that Go channels Wirth’s spirit pretty well, if not perfectly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTl0tl9BGdc

http://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article

Rob Pike’s "Public Static Void" talk is somewhat dated, but I know of no better concise presentation of exactly what Go’s inventors tried to do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kj5ApnhPAE

Pike’s more extended introduction, "Another Go at Language Design", is also somewhat dated, but, again, I know of no better comprehensive overview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VcArS4Wpqk

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Operating systems

Jerry:

I’m still annoyed that IBM shot down OS/2, just as it was getting into orbit. Strong, stable, capable and secure, it was a victim of internal politics.

Then there were evolutionary dead ends such as Pick, which came and went.

Currently, there is really no true alternative OS to Windoze. The "IXes" — in all iterations, from UNIX to AIX to Linux to Apple — have been around since the days of DOS, and while significantly better, don’t have the muscle behind them to take on the Redmond Rangers’ marketing department (and licensing schemes which made Windows a monopoly). The only "rival" to what MS is putting out is Windows XP!

If OS/2 were still actively under development by Big Blue, MS would have been forced to fix the longtime weaknesses in the Windows platform.

Ah, well, one can wish. As the song goes, "Every OS sucks!"

Keith

I was there. IBM had no idea of what they were doing. At one COMDEX, if you came within fifty feet of the Microsoft booths and had the faintest resemblance to being a developer, A Microsoft operative would thrust a Windows Software Development Kit into your hands. Meanwhile IBM was proud to announce that you could buy the OS2 SDK for only $500. I agree that if IBM had the vision that Gates had, they’d have produced a better OS; but they did not. They never believed in a computer in every house, and in every office, and in every classroom. They believed in 10,000 big computers all running IBM software. And their dreamers thought there might be as many as a million computers by the year 2000.

Growth

Jerry,

Growth is the high fructose corn syrup of the financial world. The kind of growth demanded by investors is only sustainable for a new company during its expansion phase, the "exponential" portion of the growth S-curve. Such growth is unsustainable as all markets reach a saturation point. Mature companies that try to sustain growth in profits after they have saturated their market do so by pushing profit margin. A high profit margin should mean that a company is efficient — lean, spending money mostly on making product or service, not on overhead. However, there is a limit to how much overhead can be reduced relative to production. At that point, companies driven to growth will start cutting out production personnel, the high-cost (read most experienced) ones first, then moving down through the ranks till production is fully compromised and the company fails.

I have been involved with this cycle before and it is not pretty.

I do not trust companies who claim extraordinary gains in market share as they are inevitably small, unstable companies in the early portion of their life-cycle. I also do not trust mature companies who make claims of extraordinary gains in profit margin. They are inevitably destroying their means of production.

I prefer to look for companies paying a steady and healthy dividend. This is the protein and complex carbohydrate diet with a sprinkling of healthy fats that provides for a sustainable life for the company. Wall Street shuns such companies.

Kevin L. Keegan

Between the tax and the market structure of our financial system we have made it very difficult to have what used to be called stable Blue Chip companies: companies that make a good profit and pay dividends, and don’t try to buy their competitors to expand, nor do they seek to sell out for a capital gain.  For a stable Republic you need something of that sort. Schumpeter’s creative destruction needs to be combined with prevention of “too big to fail” and with tax laws that encourage “good enough” for as long as it is good enough. 

Yes. I understand that this is difficult. But we now overregulate everything, making it very hard for new companies to enter the market because they can’t afford compliance officers and lawyers, while encouraging companies to eat each other and become too big to fail.  This is a formula for disaster.  Stable companies that make a good profit  should not be forced to grow or die.  Yes, when their market vanishes they have no choice, but often that is not what forces them into unwise expansion in search of growth.  I suspect it’s too late at night for me to be writing this.

‘Despite the threat of war with Russia, the Ukrainian government is being forced by its lenders to try to militarily recapture their eastern tax base.’

<http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/05/ukrainian_crisis_is_about_taxes.html>

——-

Roland Dobbins

That’s a bit scary. Putin is skating as close to the edge as he dares go. If he loses control, things might get out of hand. Putin needs Russians.

The one thing we all need to remember is that Ukrainians, whether they speak Russian or not, are Slavs and related to the Russians. We also need to understand that Putin is no power mad dictator: he believes himself a patriot.

Today ends the Spring pledge drive. This is the last pitch about money you’ll hear for a while (well, there may be a similar announcement in the mailbag I’m hoping to get prepared before midnight). As we have said often, this site runs on the Public Radio model. It’s free to all, but it will not stay open unless it gets enough subscribers. I do want to thank all those who chose to subscribe this week, and particularly the new subscribers.

If you have never subscribed to this place, this would be a good time to do it. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html If you have subscribed, but it has been a while since your renewed – if you can’t remember when you renewed your subscription – this would be a great time to do that. I won’t be reminding you of it for a while, so do it now while you’re thinking about it… http://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html

The rising of the oceans…

Got to wondering, could the reported rising of the oceans actually be due to pumping down the fossil water in various aquifers such as the Ogallala Aquifer for agriculture and other human uses? After all, that water goes some place after its first use and many aquifers are not being replenished as fast as they are being drained. And since water vapor is considered by some to be a significant green house gas, this draining could be contributing to climate change as well.

http://www.hpwd.com/aquifers/ogallala-aquifer

Charles Brumbelow

Well, we know that the kilometers of ice over land areas of the Northern Hemisphere has been melting into the sea for nearly 20,000 years as we entered this interim in the Ice Ages, and we know that Scandinavia and other land areas once covered by ice have been rising. And battle hill in Hastings was once a dry road gating the way out of marshes. And, as I have said, I have seen how far from the sea the Hot Gates of Thermopylae are today. Finding a stable area to be the reference point for whether the seas are rising or falling isn’t all that easy.

Fighting Climate Change with YOUR Money

Hello Jerry,

You get right to the crux of the matter:

"We will be asked to pay lots more money to avert this new climate disaster, and the costs will be enormous because the effects of the remedies on the economy will be enormous (and the effects on the climate unmeasurable—BL), and cause famines in Africa. Now that they might get in on this industrial progress we are closing the gate in their faces, but that’s the way the climate changes.

At least there are jobs in climate change analysis. So long as you come up with the accepted results. If you don’t, well, you must work for an oil company.”

Where does the ‘Climate Fighting Money’ actually go?

No one will ever fully know, of course, but the following accounts for multiple billion of the missing dollars:

http://greencorruption.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/podesta-power-and-center-for-american.html#.U2tvVl64nlK

And, as you knew with the confidence of the schedule of the next sunrise, most of it can be found in the pockets of progressives in high places and their friends.

Bob Ludwick

Begley’s Best

I bought the product at a store called Good Earth, did not use it but it had Ed’s name on it and he is one of the few that actually do what they preach, so I had to buy it, would buy it again if they still sold it.

ron

more evidence for your cocktail theory

https://shine.yahoo.com/pets/dog-protects-missing-3-old-boy-160100896.html

Phil Tharp

The theory referred to is my “cocktail party” theory – i.e. a theory I would defend in a cocktail party but not publish in a scientific journal – on the importance of dogs to human evolution of intelligence. Since the same part of the brain that we use for cognition is used by dogs for olfactory sense, I propose that long ago humanity made a deal with dogs. “We’ll get smarter. You keep your sense of smell and protect out village. We’ll look after your children and you look after ours, and we’ll be friends forever, and after we get smart we’ll be better able to take care of both of us.” Human cultural evolution is by villages, and villages with dogs have a much higher chance of producing surviving descendants, and you can work the rest of it from there.

Re: Sexual Assault on Campus

Jerry,

A few days ago I read the article linked below that bears on the subject of your latest posting. I was unaware of many of the facts regarding investigation of rapes on college campuses and frankly, it’s quite a travesty.

http://reason.com/archives/2014/05/03/how-government-created-the-campus-rape-c?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reason%2FArticles+%28Reason+Online+-+All+Articles+%28except+Hit+%26+Run+blog%29%29

Regards,

george

The entire “battle between the sexes” has got out of hand. Girls are expected to join the hookup culture will they or nil they. People call themselves feminists shout rape at every possible opportunity, often causing authorities to become indifferent to very real cases of rape. There is little rational discussion now because attempts to talk about the situation generally degenerate into name calling and charges of gross insensitivity (and that’s the mildest charge).

The Euthanasia Coaster.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_Coaster>

————

Roland Dobbins

Pope Benedict spoke of a Culture of Death.

William Harvey "Bill" Dana, RIP.

<http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-bill-dana-20140508-story.html>

—–

Roland Dobbins

.

..and one of the first astronauts…

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-bill-dana-20140508-story.html

Stephanie Osborn

Interstellar Woman of Mystery

See all my books at http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com <http://www.stephanie-osborn.com/>

Today ends the Spring pledge drive. This is the last pitch about money you’ll hear for a while (well, there may be a similar announcement in the mailbag I’m hoping to get prepared before midnight). As we have said often, this site runs on the Public Radio model. It’s free to all, but it will not stay open unless it gets enough subscribers. I do want to thank all those who chose to subscribe this week, and particularly the new subscribers.

If you have never subscribed to this place, this would be a good time to do it. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html If you have subscribed, but it has been a while since your renewed – if you can’t remember when you renewed your subscription – this would be a great time to do that. I won’t be reminding you of it for a while, so do it now while you’re thinking about it… http://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Mail 823 Tuesday, May 06, 2014

This is pledge week at Chaos Manor.  If you have not subscribed this would be a good time to do that.  If you have not renewed in a while. why not do that now? This place is free to all, but it stays open only so long as enough subscribe. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html

Different Push for Thoughtcrime, but in CA

Well, since thoughtcrime is all the rage right now, I"ll look for more instances of this in the news and get those to you.  I have some writings on it, in various stages of completion, but I suspect I’ll offer little that’s new to anyone here, though I think my points on the principles of INGSOC may be of interest.  In any case, we have this: 

<.>

The ordinance (PDF) would make it a misdemeanor to cause any Carson residents from kindergarten through age 25 to “feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed or molested” without necessarily requiring a threat of physical harm.

The California Penal Code only penalizes bullying “where a bully makes an actual threat to the life or safety of his or her victim.”

The ordinance would also make a parent or legal guardian responsible for the bullying acts of his or her child, provided that they were made aware of any violation within 90 days.

Under the measure – which would also cover cyber-bullying – police and other law enforcement officials would be given discretion to file lesser charges against any alleged bullies, the Los Angeles Times reported.

</>

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/05/06/proposed-carson-ordinance-would-criminalize-bullying/

No actual threat is required for this thoughtcrime ordinance.  I’m not sure if this is thoughtcrime or feelcrime, but we have either through proxy as well since parents are responsible for their childrens’ thoughtcrimes if notified within 90 days of said thoughtcrimes.  I’m still not sure why 90 days would be a measure of responsibility.  I guess it’s okay to charge someone with a crime if someone says they are intimidated by them within 90 days of the intimidation, but after that it’s beyond the limits of good taste? 

Intelligent people intimidate the stupid simply by talking.  If that sounds like a bigoted statement, then you must not be smart or you must not have spent time with people of lower IQ than you because they seem to think that you want to be a "greater mental power" when you open your mouth with something that doesn’t sound almost exactly like what everyone else in the group said.  It’s been that way since high school and it’s the reason I am selective about who I spend my time with.  Most people are simply insecure about their lacks of competence and effectiveness and project those insecurities onto you; therefore, I see huge potential for abuse even beyond the disgusting imposition of the idea of thoughtcrime in the first hand! 

Police can file lesser charges for someone saying something on the internet that offends someone?  It’s just not even worth talking to anyone with an IQ below 100 and/or a lack of emotional control if they’re going to do this.  I simply won’t associate with people or will do so as little as possible and with as little genuine interaction as possible because any one of these people could, potentially, use this against me and why would I care to risk it?  I’d rather just not do business with these people and hope they wither like tomatoes when taken off the vine. 

This is the most disgusting and divisive piece of legislation I’ve ever seen and I hope it fails and its architects are, politically, tarred and feathered and isolated from public life.  Ideally, they would be unable to transact business for goods and services and would need to renounce their American citizenship to have any hope of gaining acceptance among human beings for this grotesque abomination!  Were that the case, we’d only need to wait until their pantries became empty before they would be someone else’s problem or they would dig their own grave and pull the dirt in after them. 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I recall that one of the horror stories we were told in World War II was that the Nazi’s were requiring children to turn in their parents for harboring bad thoughts about Hitler. Of course that all turned out mostly to be true.

Thoughtcrime, Again

Jerry,

Your reply on one of your reader’s responses to your essay on thoughtcrime seems to have missed the point. Crime is an act committed against Law. Guilt is found by a jury of peers convened before the State and punishment is meted out by the State within the accepted Laws made by the State and Constitutional limits set upon the State.

What happened to Sterling was a private mater in as much as his violations were of the trust placed in him by a private organization to which he belonged and to the governance by which he had agreed. That private organization acted within its rules (if only barely) to protect its interests from a member who had violated the trust of the organization.

I think you would not find anything unacceptable about the expulsion of a Catholic Priest who began to expouse the notion that there is no God. That would be a "thoughtcrime" by the same standards you are applying to Sterling, but I, who am not Catholic, would find it, like you probably would, wholly appropriate for the Church to act to protect its interests. Again, at least here in the U.S., the Church is NOT the State and it can set standards for the speech of its official members if it wants to.

Kevin L. Keegan

Surely this is not the same? Of course the NBA has good reason to expunge itself from any association with Sterling now that his inner thoughts are known, but he did not publicly espouse any negative thoughts about blacks; indeed he barely did so in what he had every right to believe was a private setting, confining himself to telling his mistress that she should not publicly associate herself with black me: almost as if he was more worried about what others would think about her doing so than expressing any strong feelings of his own. Publicly he gave money to the NAACP.

We can control out actions, or the law assumes that we can do so absent some malady; but no one has full control of thoughts. Suppose I harbored lustful desire for my sister (I don’t have one so this is purely hypothetical). I would be ashamed to let anyone, particularly in my family, know I had such thoughts, and I could be careful not to express them in public. I know that such obsessions exist: are those who have them to be despised? The moralists would say only if their possessor reveled in them, but not if he tried to control them; at least that’s my understanding.

Freedom, Congress, America, Global Warming

This was supposed to be an email on global warming, but it’s become more than that.  Let’s start with some context on how I’m putting together my view of the forces ("powers that be" to laity) that produce the tension we call "the body politic".  I’ll not bore you with my precepts; I’ll skip straight to the conclusions, which offer the context and offer the link if you wish to follow up on my precepts:

<.>

Centrist:  They are in the middle of all this; they answer moderately on both sets of questions for whatever reasons this may occur and it would be different for different individuals, based on certain considerations.

Leftist:  They tend to value personal freedom but not economic freedom; belief ranges from the extreme leftist to someone who is moderate but generally left.  Not all, or even most, leftists seem extreme.

Rightist:  They tend to value economic freedom but not personal freedom.  We observe the similar ranges as we see with the left with not all, or most, seeming extreme.

Libertarian:   They tend to value both personal freedom and economic freedom in similar ranges and as with the left and the right, not all or most seem extreme.

Statist:  These people do not value personal or economic freedom; they’re not all aspiring Hitlers waiting for the right climate to flourish in; some of them are bureaucrats or elected officials — Hitler needed people to clean his toilets too.

</>

http://isi-ias.blogspot.com/2014/04/politics-and-insights-from-worlds.html

I’m not sure how much of that last one is satire directed against satirists and how much of it is truth directed against cowards.  But, to the point:

<.>

White House adviser John Podesta told reporters Monday afternoon that Congress could not derail the Obama administration’s efforts to unilaterally enact policies to fight global warming.

</>

http://dailycaller.com/2014/05/05/podesta-congress-cant-stop-obama-on-global-warming/

This position values neither personal nor economic freedom; I can and have proven this logically and I have yet to be *challenged* in this argument.  Carbon tax = life tax; the rest flows easily.  Separation of powers be damned, we must save the world from this menace.  Forget that we’ve not proven that this is right, forget that we’ve not proven that we can do anything about it even if it is right; just do what we say because we love you and we want to continue to be the number one cause of unnatural death as government was in the 20th century and others. 

It gets better!  I know you know this, but for anyone who doesn’t:  if you were paying attention in school, they told you a meteorologist was not a scientist, but someone who said some stuff on TV and wanted a pompous title.  Well, most kids were sick the day they taught life skills at school and they missed that and for that reason, we get to read bs like this:

<.>

President Obama will speak about climate change on Tuesday with a number of national and local TV meteorologists across the country, according to an administration official.

</>

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/205195-obama-to-talk-climate-with-meteorologists

Unless, *gasp*, the president knows this too and he’s only meeting with these people so he can put together a propaganda campaign.  But, he wouldn’t do that?  Oh, no, I only have a 60+ page white paper discussing Obama’s use of conversational hypnosis and neurolinguistic programing.  Yeah, I know, that’s pseudoscience unless it’s subliminal messages in heavy metal music that encourages kids to masturbate while looking at pictures of Satan or whatever the fundies were crying about in the 1980’s.  "Fundies" is an epithet, meant to be in the abusive sense, for a cohort or informal group of fundamentalists of any religious denomination to include atheists, partisans, and sports fans. 

So, before we continue, I believe that we’re looking at a president who wants to grease the skids to push more of his stalled bs through congress; they plan to violate the Constitution again in so doing and they’re going to get meteorologists in major population centers on board for this final push to save their carbon tax agenda.  But, there is more.  Come on, this is America, you had to know we were going to include MORE for only 19.95!  =)

If you have a problem with this agenda, forget it.  It’s a fiat accompli and you just failed to accept the new reality — THOUGHTCRIMINAL! 

<.>

The Obama administration is more certain than ever that global warming is changing Americans’ daily lives and will worsen — conclusions that scientists will detail in a massive federal report to be released Tuesday.

</>

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/obama-dire-climate-report-more-certain-ever

I apologize if my tone is "silly" or "stupid", but I just can’t take this seriously anymore.  These people are like cartoons and I’ll laugh as long as they stay in the idiot box.  I can’t take their supporters seriously either; I know idiots have power in large groups and all that but I have an answer for large groups of idiots too. 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Many are coming to the conclusion that it is not mere error.

US physics professor: ‘Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life’

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100058265/us-physics-professor-global-warming-is-the-greatest-and-most-successful-pseudoscientific-fraud-i-have-seen-in-my-long-life/

Carrington-class CME narrowly misses Earth

Greetings Doctor Pournelle,

I trust this email finds you well.

Between CMEs and bolide impacts; you need to get back in the TEOTWAWKI and SHTF business. A series of short videos would go like hotcakes on YouTube.

Carrington-class CME narrowly misses Earth http://phys.org/news/2014-05-carrington-class-cme-narrowly-earth.html

Best regards,

Paul T.

Survivor and disaster stories are lucrative, but wrenching to write properly. I’d really like to be of better cheer. But we’ll see.

An upgrade might be in order…

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/60-minutes-shocked-to-find-8-inch-floppies-drive-nuclear-deterrent/

I was shocked to see they are still in use. Mine are unreadable. But they are better than a box of punched cards which is what we started with.

Thought you might enjoy this clip of a vtvl test

F9R Flight Test | 1,000m <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwwS4YOTbbw&feature=youtu.be>

image <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwwS4YOTbbw&feature=youtu.be>

F9R Flight Test | 1,000m <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwwS4YOTbbw&feature=youtu.be>

View on www.youtube.com <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwwS4YOTbbw&feature=youtu.be>

Preview by Yahoo

R

Thanks

Subject: Elon Musk sues to get SpaceX into Spy Sat launch biz http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/28/musk_legal_challenge_spy_sat_launches/

More Thoughtcrime. Now Pre-Thoughtcrime

Hello Jerry,

In light of your commentary on ‘thought crime’ I thought you may be interested in Dr. Briggs column on the subject of punishing ‘pre-thought crime’ on 26 April.

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=12219

Although the column is about pre-thought crime in Canada, can you doubt, given multiple recent US stories, that the same legal principle will be ‘coming (has come?) to a country near you’?

Bob Ludwick=

Jerry,

This is obviously not an unbiased source, but it raises issues that have concerned me for a decade.

http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_05_01/Eye-openers-in-unsealed-correspondence-Ukraine-offers-its-territory-to-NATO-for-transit-traffic-1720/

The US has deployed tens of thousands of troops to a country that is land locked. It is surrounded by China to the East, Pakistan, Iran and three other Islamic republics: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan that are also land locked. Russia has had effective control over the Northern communications route. This was not problematic when George W Bush was President because for all of his faults he had the good sense to maintain good relations with Pakistan while gently encouraging economic and political reforms intended to enable a secular democracy that would be stable as an alternative to the traditional options of either Islamic theocracy or military dictatorship. President Obama’s grand standing about the Osama Bin Laden debacle ( it was not intended that our stealth helicopter would crash and that the assault team would languish at a Pakistani airport while the US secured permission for them to leave the country) has so effectively alienated the Pakistanis that a theocratic, military dictatorship is evolving. Bush was also careful to encourage Russia’s acquiescence to our war on terror.

It seems to me that President Obama is intent on stranding our expeditionary force in Afghanistan by offending all of the surrounding nations whose cooperation might be needed to supply our forces in Afghanistan or evacuate them from the country. Pakistan is as hostile to the US as it has ever been. Iran not only remains bellicose and belligerent, they are no longer intimidated by the US. The Islamic republics to the North are becoming increasingly militant. Given Obama’s idiotic incitement of the Ukraine crisis, Russia can be depended upon to not be of assistance. China might be willing to allow our troops to evacuate through its territory and provide logistical support, but for a price. Given Obama’s "interesting" responses about various territorial disputes with Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Malaysia; it is far to easy to imagine what that price would be.

James

I am concerned that the Russians will stop taking us to space and will declare the ISS abandoned jetsam.

Thank you

Jerry:

I just want to say thanks for your expressing what I’ve been thinking about the racist comments by Donald Sterling.

Sterling has, in effect, been given a death sentence for having an opinion which is unpopular with most intelligent people — and, as you point out, an opinion which doesn’t seem to be reflected in his actions, considering the number of non-whites he has hired and put into positions of authority within his organization.

Personally, I couldn’t care less about this whole thing. I’m no fan of basketball, and Sterling doesn’t sound like the kind of person that I would be interested in spending time around. However, it seems that he’s being penalized to a level far beyond justification. Would we see similar action taken against a black team owner who made similar comments about white people? I would hope not, because even though I’m white, he would be entitled to his own thoughts.

Oh, wait . . .ARE there any black owners of major sports teams . . ?

Keith Wood

Police Searches

Jerry,

On the issue of the police searching cell phones once you are caught for a traffic violation, I have a feeling the Supreme Court will allow it. The State already has the right to search your entire car when you are stopped for a traffic violation. Usually, once you are stopped in the act of committing one crime, the State has the right to see if you have committed any others — most crimes are committed by repeat offenders, so you just became the low hanging fruit in your traffic violation.

I believe you are beginning to feel that these extended searches are getting too broad, and I tend to feel the same way, but we need some sort of principle to argue for limitations. If the State can search your car because you did not stop before turning right on red, what makes the phone off limits? Consider this under the continuing merger of technologies — it may be difficult to logically or physically separate car from phone from home in a few years as the computer systems in your car become increasing integrated with the other computers in your life.

Perhaps the severity of most traffic violations does not rise to a level that justifies a major invasion of privacy by the State. Perhaps this should limit searches of the car itself as well.

Kevin L. Keegan

This is the sort of thing best left to the states, is it not? Hard cases make bad law.

Fragility of Civilization of a Technological World

Good Morning Jerry,

I have pondered the fragile nature of the modern technological world for 25 years. After numerous thought experiments over the years, I repeatedly arrive at the same conclusion: In all-out war, weapons of a traditional nature will be obsolete within 100 years. Perhaps much sooner that that.

Given the rapid advancements in biotech, within 100 years it should be child’s play for a graduate student to manufacture a lethal virus to target people with blue eyes. Or any other identifiable genetic trait for that matter.

How do we protect ourselves from a lone madman in such a world?

Regards,

Scott

Scott Sutton

As best we can, and having thought and written about it for decades, I still do not know. It may well be the answer to the Fermi paradox.

Explaining the Fermi Paradox

Dear Jerry –

A recent letter to you suggested that the Fermi Paradox could be explained by the development of individual power sufficient to destroy the civilization. Sounds fair to me.

Another, related, explanation that I thought you’d enjoy is http://xkcd.com/962/

Regards,

Jim Martin

Belters and their Torchships

Regarding James Crawford’s message about the damage potential of singleships, I’d like to make some comments. The first is that a mass ratio of 2.7 is a bit conservative; if a Belter was planning to do this, stripping out all equipment not absolutely necessary to the job of getting it there would be possible to be replaced with more fuel. (One major item would be life support, unless it was a suicide run.)

The other is that although "destroying Earth" might be hyperbole, ten thousand megatons would make a mess of Earth’s ecology and kill billions, especially considering that Known Space Earth supports twenty billion people. Dust, secondary meteors, induced volcanic eruptions – well, telling the author of Lucifer’s Hammer about all that would be a little hubristic. 🙂

This leads to a general point. Try as I might, I can’t imagine that the conquest of the Solar System could possibly proceed in a way much comparable to the conquest of America’s West (or the lesser-known conquests of Australia and Southern Africa). After all, covered wagons weren’t WMDs; and any spaceship is, at least potentially.

Ian Campbell

Jerry

Spengler has an interesting take on Why Liberals Don’t Care About Consequences:

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2014/04/29/why-liberals-dont-care-about-consequences/

“Do you hear liberals wringing their hands and asking, “Where did we go wrong?” They don’t, and they won’t. Ditto the disaster in Libya, which is turning into a Petrie dish for terrorists post-Qaddafi. It doesn’t matter. Being in love with yourself means never having to say you’re sorry.”

“It’s all about having done the right thing according to the dogma of the ersatz liberal religion. Liberalism has nothing whatsoever to do with policy and its real-world consequences. Instead of finding one’s salvation on the path of traditional religions, liberals look for salvation in a set of right opinions–on race, the environment, income distribution, gender, or whatever.”

Thought you might enjoy it.

Ed

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