Category Archives: Mail

Mail 777 Monday, June 10, 2013

On the data collection scandal:

SUBJ: Six lines . . .

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."

– Cardinal Richelieu

And now your every email and every board posting are available for the amusement of the Richelieus.

Like many others, I believe the Republic perished last November. We are now merely being presented the conqueror’s terms.

"An intelligent victor will, when possible, present his demands to the

vanquished in installments." – Adolf Hitler

With public outrage, the "Overton Window" now moves a fraction back to the left. But its architects are relentless.

I pray good men will rebel while they still can.

Cordially,

John

This is no time for rebellion. This is a time for regrouping and making sure that we win the 2014 election.

NSA whistleblower

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

The young man obviously knows little history and cannot put things into context.

NSA’s capabilities don’t really bother me. They are a pretty mission oriented group and both Cyber warfare and terrorism are real threats that make heavy use of modern communications. What bother’s me is the administration we have and it’s willingness to miss use their resources.

Phil

I am more afraid of the government than of terrorists now. I hope I am wrong.

A good overview of what NSA did and why

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/silicon-valley-doesnt-just-help-the-surveillance-state-it-built-it/276700/

Phil

I understand they had good reason for what they did. I still fear that the cure is worse than the disease.

And yet, none of this helped prevent the Boston Marathon bombing . . .

<http://theweek.com/article/index/245311/sources-nsa-sucks-in-data-from-50-companies>

——

Roland Dobbins

An afterthought: How did they really discover Petraeus’ and Broadwell’s emails? The story given at the time seemed wildly unlikely.

IE, does the political operation *already* have access to this database?

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald is claiming NSA types have already used it to listen in on personal enemies. Which also tends to support my guess that they are archiving call content as well as metadata.

I’m beginning to think I haven’t been nearly paranoid enough…

Porkypine

A frightening thought.  Surely not?  Surely…

Walter Russell Mead on "Public Peace, Secret War: The Snooping Scandals and The President’s War Strategy’

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/06/06/public-peace-secret-war-the-snooping-scandals-and-the-presidents-war-strategy/

P

Peggy Noonan’s IRS piece

For me, Peggy Noonan’s best line in that piece about the IRS was this one: “But why did all the incompetent workers misunderstand their jobs and their mission in exactly the same way?”

It’s a shame we can’t get a conservative Sam “See here, Mr. President!” Donaldson vetted into the White House Press Corps. It would be fun to hear Jay Carney answer that question.

–John

Jerry:

I noticed a reference to this article on your blog.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii?page=0,3

Since you were unwilling to subscribe to read the article, I bypassed the paywall to take a look at it.

I actually agree with part of the author’s analysis. The destruction and carnage inflicted by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was far from unprecedented. Both had a lethal radius of about one mile and a lethal area of a little more than one square mile. This was far from a quantum leap in the destructiveness inflicted by conventional bombings. The author’s argument that a force of 500 planes carrying 10,000 to 20,000 pounds of bombs each could inflict 1/20th to 1/10th the damage actually overstates the the relative destructiveness of nukes. Because of the weapons effects scaling laws, 2,500, one ton conventional bombs can be expected to do about as much damage as a single, 30 kiloton nuke. In fact a single, Iowa class Battleship with a full bag of 1,100, 16" rounds can equal the destructiveness of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. You will recall that the older battleships that had been salvaged at Pearl Harbor were assigned to the task of bombarding Japan. The ships could destroy any cities that the air force couldn’t reach.

Where I disagree with the author is the perception of threat from the Soviet Union by the Japanese. In spite of the proximity of territory, Stalin’s ability to project force into the Japanese theatre was severely limited by logistics. The Soviets were totally reliant on the Trans Siberian railway to transport goods and troops to the far East. That is a very long, vulnerable supply line of limited capacity. Keep in mind that the coal fired trains of the era had lousy fuel economy, on the order of a few ton miles per ton of coal. To ship freight over thousands of miles, you needed to think in terms of mass ratios just like a rocket. Even more significant was the lack of naval forces, particularly amphibious assault ships, available to the Soviets. They could kick the Japanese out of Manchuria because America had cut Japans logistics, but if they had attempted to invade the home islands of Japan they were up a creek.

In the final analysis, the Atomic bombs were the final psychological weapon that was needed to give Japan a pretext to surrender.

James Crawford=

Yes. I went through that chain of reasoning long ago. So far that article has told me nothing I have not known for years.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were events that could save face for the Emperor, and the Emperor’s surrender could save face for most of the Japanese officer corps. Still more than 2000 commited sucide after the announcement.

Jerry Pournelle Chaos Manor

I forgot to mention the one issue that made Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost imperative.

As this author points out, the Japanese recognized the evidence that nuclear weapons had been used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How would the Japanese know what the distinguishing characteristics of a nuclear weapon would be? The answer is that the Japanese had their own nuclear weapons program. Some believe that Japan might actually have conducted a test of a nuclear weapon in Europe.

Assuming that the US believed that Japan had a nuclear weapons program, there would have been a strong motivation to force Japan to surrender before they could employ it. Japan could not have delivered a nuke by aircraft, but mounting a bomb on a submarine then sailing it into a US harbor such as San Francisco or Seattle was very plausible.

James Crawford

== ==

The Japanese surrender

Dr. P,

Like you, when I first saw the headline for the article about what caused Japan to capitulate when it did, I was expecting a pile of propaganda. What I read instead was a surprisingly nuanced discussion of the decision process from the Japanese perspective which makes a rather compelling argument that the Japanese decision to surrender was not driven by fear of more atomic bombs but by the sudden shift of the Soviet Union from being a neutral power (who might mediate a negotiated surrender) into an enemy already attacking Japan’s least-strong frontier. In other words, the dashing of Japanese hopes for Soviet assistance in negotiating a surrender was the actual strategic change which drove them to accept an unconditional surrender.

If you are interested in reading it, I have included a copy of the complete article below. I think you will find it worth the few minutes it takes to read.

Regards,

Bill Clardy

Thank you.

Becoming a Democracy rather than a Republic

Current events signal a disturbing trend toward a Democracy rather than a Republic envisioned by the founders.

Democracy appears nowhere in the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence.

Article IV, Section 4 declares "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…".

The pledge of allegiance does not say "the democracy for which it stands" not is there a "Battle Hymn of the Democracy".

John Adams said "You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe."

Nothing in our constitution was envisioned as a grantor of rights, rather, as a protector of rights.

In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison, said that in a pure democracy, "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual." At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said, ". . . that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy." John Adams said, "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." Later on, Chief Justice John Marshall observed, "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."

The current administration and Congress seems to be devolving into the kind of tyranny that the founding fathers suffered under King George III.

Bud Pritchard

Kipling has a relevant poem that I recommend. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/special/oldissue.html

Volcanic Thimbulwinter ?

Dear Jerry;

Here to add to the received medieval history of climate as taught in the grade school textbooks of yesteryear is report of a thoroughly successful effort to correlate hard times in medieval Irish chronicles with explosive volcanism as measured by sulfate and particulate levels in Greenland ice cores

http://m.iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024035/article

—

Russell Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics Harvard University

‘Some 1,000 years ago, the Vikings set off on a voyage to Notre Dame Bay in modern-day Newfoundland, Canada, new evidence suggests.’

<http://news.yahoo.com/north-america-viking-voyage-discovered-131333241.html>

—

Roland Dobbins

Fallen Angels

“Wade”

I’m reading Fallen Angels again. Wonderful. The first few pages are a wonderful sly introduction to the story, giving us a painless background.

I have reached Capt. Lee Arteria. She is working with INS. She is dealing with angels on a glacier. Since your book was written, INS has become ICE. Seems fitting.

Ed

Jerry

I used to think that the US you portrayed in Fallen Angels was a wildly improbable dystopia. Satire, I thought it.

I never thought I’d live to see the day when it became real. Now, all we need is the long-delayed return of the glaciers to make it complete.

Ed

It’s still a good read. http://www.baenebooks.com/p-137-fallen-angels.aspx

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I note the title of your latest piece is "

Nightmares and Despair: 2012 is crucial to the republic. Illegitimi non carborandum <https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=14154> "

May I suggest that however crucial 2012 was to the Republic, it is now more than six months in the dustbin of history? Normally I’m not a smartass who makes those observations, but I can’t determine from context whether you mean 2013 (this year), 2014 (the next congressional elections) or 2016 (the next presidential election).

"Illegitimi non carborandum", however, is excellent advice in all seasons.

Respectfully ,

Brian P.

In your most recent View headline, that’s "carborundum." It is, of course, not real Latin, but rather a pun on a brand-name abrasive, but the brand is "Carborundum," not "Carborandam."

—

Meredith Dixon

I have fixed the errors. Thanks.

Since you are recommending it, I wanted to correct the name.

Herman Miller is here in Holland, Michigan.

JED

Thanks for the correction. They are very good chairs. If you will spend a large part of your life in a chair, this is the chair to have.

Apparently, they still use slide-rules in Spain.

<http://o.canada.com/2013/06/06/spain-builds-submarine-70-tons-too-heavy/>

—–

Roland Dobbins

I got my first slide rule as a birthday present before I entered 10^th grade. It helped me a lot all through high school, and some of the other students got slide rules when they saw how useful mine was. My first was fairly basic. By the time I graduated I had a log log decitrig – and still have it. It hangs on the wall on the other side of the room. And yes I too managed to mismanage the decimal point when using a slide rule.

Phone & Net Surveillance

Jerry,

I’m utterly unshocked by the revelations of the last 24 hours. To sum up what I’ve seen so far, the NSA is running something approaching a universal domestic phone transaction and net transaction+content database. (I’d not be that shocked if the database also includes phone content – at a couple kilobits per second for individuals-recognizable voice recording, that’s a mere few thousand terabytes a month.)

I’m mildly surprised that this should be revealed, yes – I take that as one more sign there’s a civil war within the Dems, now going from cold to hot. (Admittedly circumstantial, but notice how all the new scandals began surfacing, gift-wrapped, right around the time the White House became pressured enough on Benghazi to start hinting at throwing the former SecState under the bus.)

This NSA database may well be legal, within the letter of the "Patriot Act" hastily passed post 9/11. It’s well outside of the Act’s intent, according to Representative Sensenbrenner, one of the authors. (Good intentions, Road to Hell, pavement…)

In theory the database’s content is only available to intelligence professionals, and even then only accessible when a given transaction is algorithmically determined 51% likely to involve at least one foreign party.

But then, in theory the IRS was firewalled off from being used for political thuggery.

My view, then and now, was summed up nicely today at

http://datechguyblog.com/2013/06/07/how-stupid-do-you-think-we-are-paulie-was-right-edition/:

"Don’t give a power to one administration that can’t be trusted to all of them."

The big question now is, can we take these powers back before we’re destroyed by them? I’m not wildly optimistic.

"Guard? Guard? I want to see my Ambassador!"

"Easily done – he’s in the next cell."

– Firesign Theater, ~1970 – back then we thought it was comedy…

cynically (but cynically enough?)

Porkypine

= = =

Some additional observations:

NSA is also collecting all credit card transactions. The implications as part of a permanent searchable database of national scope are left as an exercise for the student. Hint: If our betters decide it’s bad for us, and you’ve *ever* bought it for other than cash, watch out.

Instapundit asks, given this NSA database exists, how long till the data-miners at Organizing For America are rooting through it? If they aren’t already. Oh, and that cam and/or mike you may routinely leave plugged in to your computer? Bad idea.

If you consider the liberal media that’s angry versus the liberal media that’s still defending even this as Clintonista versus Obamaista, it makes a surprising amount of sense. The NYT apparently contains both, from the overnight addition of "on this" to "lost all credibility".

It’s a good war – it may inadvertently give us back our freedom. But make no mistake, that will be unintended collateral damage. Both sides will happily resume colluding to rule us the instant that war is settled. If we let them.

Subj: Dogs still remember the Pact

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/350387/dog-saves-abandoned-newborn-jonah-goldberg

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

We have sometimes forgotten it, but the pact still holds.  Thank you.

Subject: U.S. publishes details of missile base Israel wanted kept secret

And we have this, among all the rest of the scandals:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/03/192895/us-publishes-details-of-missile.html#.UbEm1nbnaUk

Well …. Obama DID promise to ‘fundamentally change America’

He also promised us the most open administration in the history of these United States.

Jerry,

"A top Vatican official has said around 100,000 Christians are killed every year for reasons linked to their faith…" "Monsignor Silvano Maria Tomasi was quoted by Vatican radio on Tuesday as saying that the figures were "shocking" and "incredible"."

http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/CNG—4fd7225a1fea039d4d9f6435239 389ed—6b1

"Another senior Vatican figure, the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Mario Toso, said recently that discrimination against Christians "should be countered in the same way as anti-Semitism and Islamophobia"."

Hmm, ultimately that’s the Israeli Defense Forces and al Qaeda he’s talking about. Knights Templar II, anyone? One would hope closer to IDF style than al Qaeda…

Seriously, I’ve been wondering just how long we’ll keep on turning the other cheek to the growing outrages against local christians in various third-world hellholes. It’s getting harder to ignore in recent years.

Porkypine

Subject: Domestic Surveillance

Jerry,

In my over twenty years in the intelligence field, it literally took an act of Congress for us to do any surveillance on an a US citizen. When we determined a US Citizen was involved in any of our collection efforts, we immediately ceased the interception and turned it over to the FBI.

Now, it seems it’s being done on a daily basis. Cry for us.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/us/us-secretly-collecting-logs-of-business-calls.html?hp&_r=1&

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/usa_patriot_act/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> , according to a highly classified court order <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order> disclosed on Wednesday night.

The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a Verizon Communications <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/verizon_communications_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org> subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over “on an ongoing daily basis” to the National Security Agency <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org> all call logs “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”

T

Jerry,

Atmospheric temperature:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/ (June 4th post)

Sharp cooling continues this spring.

Arctic Sea Ice

http://www.iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/ssmis/extent_n_running_mean_F17_previous.png

Currently trending at the highest level for early June in the past 6 years,

Jim

But we are told that the warming trends continue.  Of course all those grants can’t produce bad theories can they?

Mail 776 Monday, June 03, 2013

A short selection of mail. There’s a lot more piling up. I’ll see what I can get to.  Previously today we had a View.  https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=14072

The IRS And The Iron Law

Jerry,

I gather you had distractions last week. I hope all’s well, or failing that, will be so again soon.

This article strikes me as the best summary of the problem at the IRS I’ve seen: "The IRS scandal as an example of runaway organizational culture", http://ace.mu.nu/archives/340553.php. He largely takes for granted capture of the organization by those more interested in perpetuating it than in properly carrying out its nominal task. The focus is on the organizational culture that then evolved. Money quotes:

"Liberal politics, statism, the primacy of the regulatory state: it’s just the water these people swim in."

"Instead of being a nonpartisan tax-collection and compliance agency, the IRS becomes an agent of Democrat Party ideology where tax compliance is the tool rather than the purpose of the agency."

"The organizational culture in American federal service has become not just partisan but positively messianic during the age of Obama — they’re doing it for your own good, whether you know it or not!"

"The tacit approval of Barack Obama and other powerful Democrat politicians removes any vestige of unease. It explains the near-complete lack of guilt or remorse shown so far by IRS management. In their minds, they are doing nothing wrong."

and

"The solution to this scandal is not to fire the likes of Lois Lerner (though that would be a good start). The answer is to abolish the agency entirely, and to make a concerted effort to shrink the size and reach of the entire federal government apparatus. For the federal government apparatus is not nonpartisan; it is and will continue to be predominately Democrat in culture. The federal government bureaucracy has been captured by Democrats in almost exactly the same way college campuses were captured."

More or less what I’ve been saying for decades: Decimate ’em. Place a ten-year Constitutional sunset on all Federal acts and agencies.

Stagger it randomly to start; each year one-tenth of the government is abolished. If there’s a defensible need for it, the Congress can re-authorize it and start it over. If not, good riddance. And in ten years, the Congress has to, very publicly, decide again. No more unfireable bunny inspectors, no more mohair subsidies outliving their usefulness by a century, no more bureaucracies generations removed from their nominal missions.

It will be occasionally disruptive and expensive, yes. But far less so than what we’ve got.

Porkypine

That would do the job, but I fear that I have no advice on how to make it happen. Elect a dictator for a nine year period, with a small political – not judicial – review committee with limited powers, and stand well back – but the problem there is whether the Emperor you have created will let go, and whether anyone will after that respect the limits of the Constitution. We have reached a pretty critical point in the constitutional history of these United States.

I hope to be recovering from distractions. Thanks.

Phlogiston and Vulcan

Dr. Pournelle

When I studied physics as an undergraduate, the search was on for quarks. I recall an article appeared in, oh, Omni or Analog that reported a physicist had found quarks. He reported that quarks were several feet in diameter and colored purple and green and yellow. All that was needed to see quarks was a warm Caribbean beach, a fifth or two of whiskey, and a great willingness to see quarks. In the ’70s, that was your basic quark detector.

In the 19th century, Urbain Le Verrier calculated the orbit of Mercury using Newtonian mechanics. Unfortunately, the measurements of Mercury’s passage differed slightly but measurably from Le Verrier predictions. Le Verrier posited the existence of a small planet inside the orbit of Mercury to account for the difference in order to save Newtonian mechanics. Lo and behold, astronomers came up with observations that purported to confirm the existence of Vulcan. One was awarded the Legion d’Honneur for his work. Le Verrier died happy, content in the knowledge that Vulcan existed. Except it didn’t.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(hypothetical_planet)

Before Vulcan, chemists proposed the existence of phlogiston to explain combustion. Once it became possible to accurately measure the weights of materials before and after combustion, some chemists proposed that phlogiston had negative weight in order to explain the increase in weight of burned materials. The old chemists did not give up phlogiston. They just died. A new generation grew up with newly discovered elements and the theory of oxidation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory

When I was an undergraduate, my professors said that the equations for mass traveling faster than c yielded meaningless answers. We students replied, No, they yielded negative imaginary mass. The professors said, That’s meaningless. We students replied, No, it is not meaningless; we just don’t know what it means. I have waited many years for one of my fellows to ascribe meaning to negative imaginary mass. I still wait.

Now I read that there is more Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the universe than there is . . . Light Matter and Light Energy, I guess. And that, like String Theory, it is untestable. In the cases of DM and DE because we can’t get handles on them using the tools of our world. Question: If we cannot observe or manipulate DM or DE, how is it that they interact with our world?

A suggestion: Let’s give DM and DE the dignity they deserve and call them phlogiston.

Surely there must be a physicist or six who has thought similar thoughts. If modern physics require phlogiston to save the equations, perhaps the equations are not worth saving.

"All models are wrong, but some are useful."

The Einsteinian model is still useful, but so is Newtonian mechanics. You can plot a course to the Moon and back without resort to Einstein’s theories. But at the boundaries, the Einsteinian model requires contortions that are literally incredible.

Perhaps as happened with phlogiston and Vulcan, advance will come when the current generation of physicists — who have their careers invested in this model — die. A younger generation will work up new theories to deal with the discrepancies at the boundaries. And those new theories will work until they find a new boundary. And then we shall begin the round again.

"Vanity of vanities. All is vanity! . . . and there is nothing new under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:2 & 9

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

Well done. I will add that if you assume that gravity has a propagation velocity of the speed of light (local speed of light; no need to assume it is universal through the Universe) then the shift in the Perihelion of Mercury is predictable and explained; you don’t need either General or Special Relativity to explain that observation.

I am working on a presentation of the evidence for and against the Expanding Universe. Meanwhile Tom Bethell’s presentation of Petr Beckmann’s aether theory, Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? () is a very good non-mathematical explication of the Beckmann theories. Beckmann contended not that Einstein was wrong, but that every observation used to confirm Einstein Relativity could be accounted for by Backmann’s assumption of the local gravitational field as the aether, and could do so with enormously simple math, simple algebra and calculus, no tensors required. Hilton Ratcliffe, an astronomer, in The Static Universe Exploding the Myth of Cosmic Expansion makes the case that there is very little observational evidence in favor of the hypothesis that large objects are moving away from each other at rates of 70 kilometers per second, but this applies only to relatively distant objects. It’s 70 km/second time the distance from Earth in megaparsecs. If you take this literally you will end up with objects moving away from each other at speeds approaching the speed of light. Ratcliffe makes the observational case well. More on that another time.

I can’t quite make myself believe that most of the universe is invisible.

An alternate view of what ended the war with Japan –

Jerry –

This essay makes a pretty compelling case that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had essentially nothing to do with ending the war with Japan.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii

–Gary P.

You have to subscribe or register or something to read the article, so I didn’t bother, but before the login screen covered everything I saw the headline “The Bomb didn’t defeat Japan, Stalin did,” which as been the communist party line since my undergraduate days. I find it unlikely that it has any new data that we haven’t had for a long time. Given that even after the Emperor ordered them to lay down their arms thousands of Japanese Army officers committed ritual suicide, it’s unlikely that the predictable Russian entry into the war would have done the job – and it’s not at all certain that Stalin would have entered the war at all without the bomb. In any event, Truman had little choice. He was President of the United States.

Derbyshire: The Vast and the Tiny

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/29/the-vast-and-the-tiny/print

Well written book reviews.

100,000 Christian Martyrs A Year 

Jerry,

"A top Vatican official has said around 100,000 Christians are killed every year for reasons linked to their faith…" "Monsignor Silvano Maria Tomasi was quoted by Vatican radio on Tuesday as saying that the figures were "shocking" and "incredible"."

http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/CNG—4fd7225a1fea039d4d9f6435239389ed—6b1

"Another senior Vatican figure, the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Mario Toso, said recently that discrimination against Christians "should be countered in the same way as anti-Semitism and Islamophobia"."

Hmm, ultimately that’s the Israeli Defense Forces and al Qaeda he’s talking about. Knights Templar II, anyone? One would hope closer to IDF style than al Qaeda…

Seriously, I’ve been wondering just how long we’ll keep on turning the other cheek to the growing outrages against local christians in various third-world hellholes. It’s getting harder to ignore in recent years.

Porkypine

I’m going to let you think for a bit before answering this. Most modern accounts of the Crusades are heavily biased against them just as most of those I read when growing up were romantically in favor. I still remember Scott’s Talisman. One book worth reading is Harold Lamb’s Iron Men and Saints, and its sequel The Flame of Islam; the two were collected into the composite work The Crusades, ut I have not seen any copies of the combined work for sale. The first volume is the best. They give a pretty good picture of what things were like at the time. Lamb was not a professional historian, which is to his advantage since he was a good writer.

SUBJ: US Moon Base Defense Manual 1959

https://www.smallarmsoftheworld.com/content/pdf/S00110.pdf

{Download PDF, 9.5MB}

"Moon Base project, US Army, 1959. Project Horizon- Phase I Report “A US Army Study for the Establishment of a Lunar Military Outpost” Volume

III: Military Operational Aspects (U). 8 June, 1959."

"This military manual/report analyzes the USSR threat to US interests on a Lunar base, and methods and weapons to defend and fight on the moon.

Trajectory of projectiles under the light Lunar gravity is addressed."

"Lunar weapons recommended to use against the Soviet threat are a pistol that fires a buckshot round to maximize spacesuit penetration; Handheld directional mines on a stick because “The rapid fall off of blast pressure in the vacuum” would not cause danger behind a stick held claymore type device. Claymore type weapons; and of course, the Davy Crockett nuclear launcher. The illustrations are outstanding, from the short-sleeve spacesuits to the “Deely-bobbers” on the helmets, assumed to be for communication. This manual is from the collection of the late Dr. Edward Ezell, and Col. John Starling discovered it in the reference library at Shrivenham, and shared it with us. It’s not a Confidential Report anymore, so enjoy! LMO Working Reference Library"

I hadn’t known that particular document had been declassified. Actually I haven’t thought about it for decades. Interesting. The only phrase I particularly remember from it was the conclusion that blast was not a good kill mechanism for the lunar environment. It was all pretty well speculation, of course.

: HSV-2 Swift,

Rode hard, put away wet, and still kickin’:

http://dams.defenseimagery.mil/lightbox/assetcolcreate.action?name=previewcol&id=ba219eae2788ce3cec5d21fc3a88751f66dda5f8&scope=request&nextpage=/vims_lbox_preview.jsp

Intelligence cubed

Truly, he must be the kwisatz haderach !

http://youtu.be/K_gHa2x2OQA

Russell Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics Harvard University

Depends on where you rank the ability to solve the Cube.

SUBJ: Cheesed off

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10076336/Grandmother-wont-make-Double-Gloucester-for-cheese-rolling-event-after-heavy-handed-threats-from-police.html

"For some 200 years, people have chased a large rolling cheese down a steep hill each year in Gloucestershire, England. And for the past 25 years, Diana Smith, 86, has made the cheese wheel they chase. But Smith says she won’t make the cheese this year, after getting threatened by police. Three officers showed up at her home and warned her the event was dangerous and she would be held liable for any injuries suffered by those taking part in the chase."

Will there ever again be an England?

Cordially,

John

Which may explain why the Scots want their own Parliament and laws…

Subject: cold fusion

Jerry,

I haven’t had a round tuit yet to look at that article, I had it by email from a friend before you published and set it on the back

burner, and there it sits…

I’ll note that in the US, Blacklight Power (www.blacklightpower.com) has continued to impress investors, make press releases (though

the most recent is a year old), and publish papers on the web site ever since I first heard of them 17 years ago, with its claim of

a non-fusion based energy source which literally defies conventional quantum mechanics.

Jim

I am willing to believe that low temperature fusion is possible. I am not willing to believe that if it is achieved it can be kept a secret and needsto be surrounded by hocus pocus, and alas, all the cases I have heard of turn out to have reasons why the press can’t take some meters and thermometers and go have a look…

I wish it were all true but I also knew Bussard pretty well. He was an honest man — and didn’t try to hide what he was doing.

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

Low temperature fusion IS possible. We’re doing it every day in our laboratory, using commercially purchased apparatus. But it is not a breakeven device, by orders of magnitude.

Roger that – if they won’t let someone else make an honest measurement, it’s not a honest result.

Jim

Forbes

Hi Jerry,

Forbes moved to a "contributor" model last year. Anybody can sign up and get approved to be a "contributor", and at that point they have their soapbox under the Forbes brand name. See http://onforb.es/M8zjVk

That’s why you’re confused why "Forbes" is excited about the cold fusion guy. Forbes is not; there’s just a "Forbes contributor" who is excited about him. Forbes doesn’t edit the Forbes "contributors" at all, is my understanding.

I see this as really unfortunate; Forbes basically has sold out its name to be a blog hosting site.

Regards,

B

Thanks. I hadn’t realized that.

A word about the Oklahoma tornado, from Oklahoma

There has been much disinformation and propaganda in the national press that global warming somehow played a part in the recent devastating tornado in Moore, Oklahoma. However, quite the opposite is the case.

I have lived in Oklahoma for all of my 58 years and this has been the coolest spring in recent memory. The thunderstorms that spawn tornadoes here in Oklahoma are the result of cold air from the North (Rockies) colliding with warm moist air from the South (Gulf of Mexico). This spring we have had an abnormal amount of strong cold fronts coming down from the North as well as arriving much later in the season than usual.

Apparently this is not a local anomaly either. There is a report out that the mean temperature of the Northern hemisphere was in fact cooler in April than in March:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/04/uah-global-temperature-down-significantly/

Of course not much has been said about this cooler weather. After all, who wants a visit from the IRS?

Blair

Norman, Oklahoma

London Terrorists

Dr. Pournelle:

Regarding "Mons Meg" and [presumably] your idea of reviving the Indian Mutiny era practice of "firing from [not OUT of] guns", I have a far better idea.

We’re both old enough to remember that great cheesy Viking movie, "The Long Ships", with Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier. I propose that all such terrorists, including Nidal Hassan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, be given a ride on the "Mare of Steel". Since in the movie, it was the concoction of a Moorish prince (Poitier), it can hardly be called "Islamophobic". I see great pay-per-view potential…

Chris Morton

It does not appear likely…

Mail 775 Monday, May 20, 2013

Harlan Ellison at his best

Dr Pournelle

In a 1994 interview <http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/05/video-tom-snyders-1994-interview-with-harlan-ellison/> , Tom Snyder shocked Harlan Ellison into silence. Hard to believe but true.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

That is definitely Harlan at his best. Done back when Genie was still in existence. And as one might suspect, Harlan is like that off stage as well as on. He hand delivered his contribution to my 2020 Vision anthology in 1974. I have known Harlan for a very long time, and we remain friends. And this interview is worth watching.

IRS & 2012 Turnout

Jerry,

So, the number of conservative groups harassed and obstructed by the IRS

2010-2012 is at 500 and still rising.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/05/15/reports-irs-spared-liberal-groups-as-tea-party-languished-more-conservative-orgs-targeted-than-first-thought-n1596864

Many of these groups say they would have worked on turning out conservative votes last fall, if they hadn’t been all tied up fighting the IRS with their fundraising crippled, or outright discouraged from organizing at all.

And Obama won last November essentially because liberal turnout broke records while conservative turnout was down several points from historical trends. Hmm. I am shocked – shocked I say – that the side perpetually howling about "voter suppression" turns out to have won by flagrantly using the power of the IRS to do wholesale voter suppression.

Meanwhile, today a reporter asked Obama if anyone in the White House had known what the IRS was up to – and Obama ducked the question. What, a forthright "no" seemed inadvisable? I wonder why?.. I predict that we’ll be a long painful time getting to the truth on that point.

It doesn’t decrease my respect for this administration, because I haven’t had any for a long time now. It sure does confirm my decision to remain, for purposes of public political discussion,

Porkypine

IRS WH Link?

Jerry,

Now this is interesting. The head of the IRS employees union (active in supporting Obama’s election) met with the President at the White House in spring 2010 – one day before the IRS first started officially targeting the Tea Party.

Who was at that meeting and what do they remember is one angle to investigate. It’ll most likely produce a lot of "I don’t recall"s, of course.

But emails and phone calls over the next 24 hours between the union head and the IRS managers involved could be worth a look.

The President has benefited from the assumption that he couldn’t have been directly involved from a lot of people writing about this. Many, I expect, who don’t necessarily believe it, but who assume he’d never be so clumsy as to be caught. That may not turn out to be the case.

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/20/obama-and-the-irs-the-smoking/

Porkypine

Non-Profit Double Standard

Jerry,

One developing line of counter-attack by Administration supporters on the IRS scandal seems to be that 501c non-profits are not SUPPOSED to do politics, therefore proctological scrutiny for the wave of Tea Party 501c applications was entirely justified.

What this misses is that lefty 501c’s have been flagrantly ignoring the politicking limits for decades and getting away with it. The precedent had been set, the 501c politicking limits were largely a dead letter – as long as your group had "Progress" or "Social Justice" in its name.

"Constitution" or "Tea Party", apparently not so much. When conservatives came along and started making use of the mechanisms the left had developed, suddenly the letter of the law was to be be applied again? (Over-applied; much of the data the IRS was collecting makes sense – name your donors, and associates, and oh by the way, interns too

– mainly in the context of building a political enemies database.)

Now, if the IRS BOLO criteria had also included "progress" and "justice"

as keywords, they might have a point. But the lefty political-group 501c apps continued to skate through the process.

It won’t fly. At least, it had better not fly – this is effectively a formal declaration of anathema against half the country. If what’s left of our traditional governing mechanisms can’t correct this, then they’ll have been conclusively proven broken. At which point, things will get far too interesting in ways I won’t even try to predict.

I like a quiet life myself. Which perversely means I’m going to have to get off my butt and get involved in local electoral politics for 2014.

Oh well, life in the early 21st century – one heaping serving of cognitive dissonance after another.

Porkypine

I do note that the plea that they needed a quick way to separate the “legitimate” social responsibility organizations from the political ones did not stop them from approving dozens to hundreds of organizations for “social responsibility” and favoring “progressive solutions to social problems” without much if any scrutiny, while those who used the word Patriotic in their statement of purpose got special screening.

As to how high this went, I know that campaign managers will sometimes hear stories they don’t want the candidate to know. The problem is that if the candidate is in political office – particularly if he is the President – and the activity is illegal, then it’s your duty to tell him. Those who knew and didn’t say understand – or should understand – that while they were expected to be silent, the cost of that is that they have to go.

Subject: White House Advisor On Tea Party Targeting: Law Is "Irrelevant" <http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/348729/white-house-advisor-tea-party-targeting-law-irrelevant>

This shouldn’t surprise us from an administration who considers themselves above the law:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/348729/white-house-advisor-tea-party-targeting-law-irrelevant

Tracy

501(c)(4)s

When I was on the board of a 501(c)(3) an Oregon based association for Non Profits held seminars every January, which I attended with great attention to details offered.

The Oregon Department of Justice sent a speaker and the IRS always flew in Joe IForgetHisLastName, a high ranking manager from their San Francisco mot-for-profit branch office to give their POV on things.

Good thing because in the last 4 years, the IRS has been making pretty big changes for non profits.

A 501(c) application used to be pretty simple and inexpensive. It’s now over 30 pages and the filing fee is north of $700.

Once you could file a low volume non-profit’s tax return on a post card. That’s going away. The 990 annual tax form has gone from about 8 pages to over 30. There are questions you don’t get to not answer, though for now, they don’t care what you answer. That will change.

Questions like "do you have a written anti-discrimination policy?" and "Do you publish your annual 990 form on your website?"

Some of the current scandal is odd to me. For instance, if you incorporate a new not-for-profit TODAY and plan to file for 501(c)(3) status, you can give donors receipts for donations and they can deduct these donations based only on your intent. You have 18 months to file the application for a 501(c)(3). If you file, your donors can continue to deduct donations till the final determination. If you fail to file, they must stop taking donations for donations made after your 18 months in biz anniversary but the earlier donations are still kosher. If you file and are turned down, it gets squishy, but if you appeal and win, your donors are fine. If you appeal and are again turned down, the donations between 18 months and final TD can be challenged at audit.

The Barack H. Obama Foundation was approved in 34 days. This is unequal treatment. Since 2008 it has been 6-9 months for new corporations. The one on whose board I served took 18 months but it had a history to sort out.

Scotch

Stung by the Hornet’s Nest: Hasse Sex-with-Insects Tale a Hoax

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/468132/20130516/man-sex-hornet-s-nest-fake-hoax.htm

Yes, I thought at the time the story seemed unlikely, but then that was obvious. Had it been true it it certainly was a credential for a well earned Darwin Award. Ah, well.

ISDC, navy woman

Hey Jerry –

1) I’ll be giving two Server Sky talks this year at ISDC. Summary: http://server-sky.com/ISDC2013 . Redefining SBSP small works as well as making rockets big. Will I see you there, or should I stop in LA sometime?

2) I toured an Arleigh Burke class missile frigate with the fire control officer, a young woman in charge of the 5 inch deck gun. She /loves/ that gun, can do the physics and patch the software, and can put a shell through a dinner plate at 10 mile range. Whoever she targets dies quick. There may be consternation about service integration in high places, but women like her are doing a great job protecting the Republic.

Keith Lofstrom

I was a guest on the commissioning cruise for the missile ship USS Grace Hopper (“Amazing Grace”), which was the first ship designed for mixed sex crews. No one questions the capability of women to perform military tasks, particularly things like naval operations. The question is at what cost do youy integrate the sexes in the armed services? That depends in large part on just what you intend your armed forces to do. One of the costs is that you pretty well deny yourself the service of a particular kind of man, who makes a very effective soldier, but who is also very likely to end up on charges of sexual harassment.

There are other costs.

If you do not let women perform certain tasks then the cost is the service of some very competent people. We had managed that situation fairly well until recently when it was decided that military service was a right and all military jobs ought to be open to all who want to try out for them. We have yet to see the cost of that decision. My guess is that it will be greater than we expected it to be.

Stephen Vincent Benét

Dr. Pournelle, you wrote:

I read this in the public library in Memphis about 1940. I have never forgotten it

I first read "Nightmare Number Three" when I was in 6th Grade at Carson Long Military Academy in Pennsylvania. It was actually part of the required reader for my class in that long-ago school year of 1969-1970. The poem made such a deep impression on me that I always keep a copy around.

The school also had certain requirements in education that I think would serve the public system well. They held a twice-yearly competition where you had to recite a poem from memory – mine would always be Longfellow’s "Paul Revere’s Ride" due to an actual family connection to one of the other riders. The other requirement was that on Lincoln’s Birthday (still celebrated as a separate holiday at the time) you had to be able to recite the Gettysburg Address from memory if you wanted the day off from school or school activities.

David Crowley

A Very Good Year

Was 2, 870,002,013 BC, according to British and Canadian geologists who have tasted it and other vintages encountered as isolated springs of water , out of contact with the atmosphere for several billion years, and flowing from the newly opened deep levels of the two mile deep Timmens copper mine in Ontario.

Saturated with hydrogen, its capacity to support life resembles the hydrothermal fluids emerging from ocaen rift and trench black smokers today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy-6Jo34z1Y

—

Russell Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics Harvard University

Star Wars convention brawl - 

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article3765790.ece

Star Wars convention opts for the force of the fist

Norwich Star Wars fans clashed with rival sci-fi groups after claiming the town was not big enough for both conventions

Nico Hines <http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/profile/Nico-Hines>

Published at 3:56PM, May 15 2013

It was probably the first time Norfolk Constabulary officers have broken up a fight involving two doctors and a judge.

Rival science-fiction clubs had to be separated by the force last weekend as the Norwich Star Wars Convention descended into a daft brawl.

Aficionados of the George Lucas space series went head-to-head with Judge Dredd and two fully-grown men dressed as Doctor Who. It was the culmination of a long-running feud between two of Norwich’s most illustrious sci-fi organisations.

In a convention centre far, far away, just north of the A11’s Thickthorn Services, more than 1,000 people, many in fancy dress, gathered to catch up with friends and meet actors who had played minor roles in cult sci-fi films including The Empire Strikes Back and Blade II.

The unexpected melodrama unfolded when Jim Poole, treasurer of the Norwich Sci Fi Club, arrived at the event, which had been organised by the Norwich Star Wars Club. A dispute between the groups began when one of them claimed the town was not big enough for both of their conventions.

The Norwich Star Wars Club held its first annual fair in 2007, but stopped after three events because the organiser, Richard Walker, became seriously ill. According to Mr Walker, he gave his blessing for the Norwich Sci Fi Club to hold its own sci-fi convention in the city with stalls selling games and models, and guest appearances by actors in costume.

When Mr Walker had recovered from his cancer treatment, he announced his plans for the “4th Norwich Sci-Fi and Film Convention”, which went ahead last weekend. The chairman of the Norwich Sci Fi Club objected, however, demanding that the function should not be called a “convention” to ensure there was no confusion with his own event.

“It has been a long running saga,” said Mr Walker, who confronted the rival club’s treasurer on Sunday. “I saw him walking around with a digital camera videoing everything. I walked over and asked him what he was doing here and he told me he had paid his money to get in.

“I told him I wanted him to leave. I put my hand in my pocket and got out £10 and offered it to him, saying it was a refund on his £5 admission and another £5 to get a taxi.”

He admitted that he then laid his hands on Mr Poole and tried to escort him from the convention centre on University of East Anglia campus. “He refused to leave again and I told him I wanted him to go as he had caused enough trouble in the past,” he said.

Mr Poole, who claimed he was only at the event to improve his Doctor Who autograph collection, continued the argument with Mr Walker outside the venue. He was accompanied by three friends from his club. One was dressed as the Doctor Who played by David Tennant, another was impersonating Peter Davidson’s version in a cricket sweater; the third was wearing a Judge Dredd costume.

Police officers confirmed that they had been called to reports of a man being assaulted but made no arrests after studying CCTV footage. “The two rival groups were spoken to and advised to keep out of each other’s way,” a spokesman said.

The Norwich Sci Fi Club will go ahead with its own Nor-Con Norwich Sci Fi convention in September at the Norwich North Holiday Inn.

Sounds like an episode of The Big Bang Theory…

Jerry

APOD: 2013 May 14 – Galaxy Collisions: Simulation vs Observations:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130514.html

It is very cool.

Ed

I will have more on the problem of colliding galaxies for The Big Bang and Expanding Universe theory in n upcoming review about cosmology. But yeah, it’s cool. Thanks.

The Organleggers

Jerry,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10055772/British-schoolgirl-murdered-for-her-organs-in-India-family-claim.html

Jim

Bug Jack Baron…

Unknown Mathematician Proves Elusive Property of Prime Numbers

Jerry

An unknown mathematician proves one of the oldest unsolved problems in mathematics — the twin primes conjecture, which proposes that there are infinitely many pairs of primes that differ by only 2:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/twin-primes/

“Rumors swept through the mathematics community that a great advance had been made by a researcher no one seemed to know — someone whose talents had been so overlooked after he earned his doctorate in 1992 that he had found it difficult to get an academic job, working for several years as an accountant and even in a Subway sandwich shop. “Basically, no one knows him,” said Andrew Granville, a number theorist at the Université de Montréal. “Now, suddenly, he has proved one of the great results in the history of number theory.”

“Mathematicians at Harvard University hastily arranged for Zhang to present his work to a packed audience there on May 13. As details of his work have emerged, it has become clear that Zhang achieved his result not via a radically new approach to the problem, but by applying existing methods with great perseverance. “The big experts in the field had already tried to make this approach work,” Granville said. “He’s not a known expert, but he succeeded where all the experts had failed.”

“Prime numbers are abundant at the beginning of the number line, but they grow much sparser among large numbers. Of the first 10 numbers, for example, 40 percent are prime — 2, 3, 5 and 7 — but among 10-digit numbers, only about 4 percent are prime. For over a century, mathematicians have understood how the primes taper off on average: Among large numbers, the expected gap between prime numbers is approximately 2.3 times the number of digits; so, for example, among 100-digit numbers, the expected gap between primes is about 230. But that’s just on average. Primes are often much closer together than the average predicts, or much further apart. In particular, “twin” primes often crop up — pairs such as 3 and 5, or 11 and 13, that differ by only 2. And while such pairs get rarer among larger numbers, twin primes never seem to disappear completely.”

The rest of the paper is about how he did it. But what drama! If someone wrote this as fiction, it would be dismissed as unrealistic. Heh.

Ed

I remember a six month fascination with number theory when I was in high school, and another as an undergraduate, but in both cases I found that the pretty theories required an awful lot of hard work if you wanted to master proofs; and I didn’t have the temperament for it.

Stocks and windows 8

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Two things which I believe you will find of interest.

First , Microsoft has admitted defeat and is scaling back Windows 8. The ‘under the hood’ bits will remain, but Metro will be far less obtrusive. A good move on their part, I think. From what I’ve seen the same interface doesn’t work well on both tablets and PCs.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/330c8b8e-b66b-11e2-93ba-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2SgdQzjSe

Second, this article notes that although the US appears to be heading into recession stock markets index are higher than ever. Why is this?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100718144

I suggest this explanation is accurate:

"It is precisely because growth continues to underperform that the Federal Reserve <http://www.cnbc.com/id/43752521> can and will keep interest rates at record lows and its supplemental bond-buying program in place.

And that guarantees two things: first, that investors—especially pension funds which need to hit annual return targets north of 5 percent—will continue to pile into riskier, higher-yielding assets; and second, that companies able to take advantage of these super-low borrowing costs will continue issuing debt to buy back shares of their own stock, supporting both their individual performance and that of the broader market.

No wonder investors describe it as a hold-your-nose-and-invest kind of environment. Voodoo shop? You bet, says Brian Reynolds of Rosenblatt Securities; but "we think this boom will go on for years to come because of those [pension] cash flows." A new acronym—FOBOR, or FOrced Buyers Of Risk—is making City rounds. Even the old Chuck Prince line ("As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance") is becoming alarmingly common again."

Oh yes. Also, Ender’s Game has evidently been made into a movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP0cUBi4hwE&feature=player_embedded

Respectfully,

Brian P.

CocaCola went back to The Real Thing after the New Coke fiasco. Now Microsoft…

I try to stay away from comments about investments, but it should be clear that very low borrowing rates is often a formula for producing a bubble.

Economic Recovery Still Lags

View online at: http://patriotpost.us/editions/18034

Monday Brief

Economic Recovery Still Lags

May 6, 2013 <http://patriotpost.us/editions/18034/print> <http://pdf.patriotpost.us/2013-05-06-brief-59d6b6ef.pdf>

The Foundation

"How prone all human institutions have been to decay." –James Monroe

Government

"US job growth in April beat economist expectations as nonfarm payrolls rose 165,000, and the jobless rate fell to a four-year low of 7.5%. But the report contained worrisome signs that President Obama’s health care reform law is hurting full-time, high-wage employment. While the American economy added 293,000 jobs last month, according to the separate household survey, the number of persons employed part time for economic reasons — ‘involuntary part-time workers’ as the Labor Department calls them — increased by almost as much, by 278,000 to 7.9 million. These folks were working part time because a) their hours had been cut back or b) they were unable to find a full-time job. At the same time, the U-6 unemployment rate — a broader measure of joblessness that includes discouraged workers and part-timers who want a full-time gig — rose from 13.8% to 13.9%. … The labor force participation rate was dead in the water. If it were back to January 2009 levels, the U-3 unemployment rate would be 10.9%. … Only 53.9% of private industries added jobs last month, the second lowest of the labor market recovery, according to JPM. … If the economy continues to add jobs at the 2013 pace of 196,000 a month, the labor market would return to pre-recession employment levels in seven years and ten months, according to the Hamilton Project’s ‘jobs gap’ calculator." –American Enterprise Institute’s James Pethokoukis <http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/05/was-the-april-jobs-report-really-the-obamacare-jobs-report/>

Post Your Opinion <http://patriotpost.us/editions/18034#post-comment>

For the Record

"9.5 million Americans have left the workforce during the presidency of Barack Obama, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In April, the total number of Americans counted as ‘not in the labor force’ declined for the first time since December, but that number was still near a record high at 89,936,000. Those not in the labor force declined by 31,000, from a record high of 89,967,000 in March. That broke the recent record of 89,304,000 not in the labor force in February of this year. Since February 2009, the first full month of Obama’s presidency, 9,549,000 people have left the labor force. There were 80,387,000 Americans not working that month, compared with 89,936,000 not working or looking today, according to the latest economic release from BLS. … In the 50 months since Obama has been in office, the number of people counted as not in the labor force has declined 16 times." –CNSNews’ Elizabeth Harrington <http://cnsnews.com/news/article/95-million-people-have-left-workforce-under-obama>

Re: The Left

"Liberals deny that raising labor cost through minimum wages reduces incentives to hire. But if you asked a liberal for advice on how to stop rich people from shirking their tax obligations, they’d say raise the penalty. Ask low-information Harvard University doctors what should be done to stem gun violence and they answer that government should institute ‘a new, substantial national tax on all firearms and ammunition.’ Ask Illinois’ Cook County Board of Commissioners President Toni Preckwinkle how to reduce purchases of bullets and guns. She’d say levy a nickel tax on each bullet and a $25 tax on each gun. Liberals demonstrate they understand the law of demand — that raising the cost of something lessens the amount taken — but they deny that it applies to labor. That’s as ludicrous as suggesting that the law of gravity applies to everything in the universe except cute creatures, such as pandas and puppies." –economist Walter E. Williams <http://patriotpost.us/opinion/17926>

Essential Liberty

"It used to be that Americans mostly agreed that in order to attain citizenship, immigrants had to not only come to this country legally but also demonstrate, after training and study in the American system, that they believed in the unique United States Constitution and embraced what it means to be an American. Though that still occurs in the naturalization process, we seem to have abandoned it altogether in connection with the immigration debate. What sense does it make that we seek to instill a love of America in those earnestly seeking to acquire legal citizenship through the proper procedures but ignore it altogether in our rush to legalize 11 million illegals? … Indeed, hard-leftists don’t just disagree with many of America’s founding ideals; they believe that it’s somehow backward even to have such ideals, because to them, it reflects a prejudice against other systems, cultures and values. So, you see, this is not really a debate over whether the American system and the ideas and values undergirding it produced the greatest nation in world history and thus should be preserved. It is a core disagreement about whether it’s even proper and desirable to endorse a unique set of founding ideals as being superior to any other." –columnist David Limbaugh <http://patriotpost.us/opinion/17993>

Insight

"Consensus: The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: ‘I stand for consensus?’" –British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)

The Gipper

"The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed." –Ronald Reagan <http://reagan2020.us/>

Political Futures

"[T]he institutions — the organs of the body politic — that are the most obsessed with eradicating bigotry (as liberals define it) tend to be the places that have to worry about it the least. The Democratic Party is consumed with institutionalized angst about prejudice, intolerance and bigotry in America. But the odds are that relatively few of these people (particularly those under the age of 50) have been exposed to much real racism or intolerance. The same goes for the mainstream media. In fact, many major media outlets have explicit policies dedicated to hiring and promoting minorities, women, gays, etc. Like the Democratic Party, some have very strict hiring quotas in this regard. The well-paid executives and managers of these institutions come from social backgrounds where the tolerance for anything smacking of overt bigotry is not just zero, but in the negative range; they bend over backwards to celebrate members of the officially recognized coalition of the oppressed." –columnist Jonah Goldberg <http://patriotpost.us/opinion/17998>

Opinion in Brief

"If our educational institutions — from the schools to the universities — were as interested in a diversity of ideas as they are obsessed with racial diversity, students would at least gain experience in seeing the assumptions behind different visions and the role of logic and evidence in debating those differences. Instead, a student can go all the way from elementary school to a Ph.D. without encountering any fundamentally different vision of the world from that of the prevailing political correctness. Moreover, the moral perspective that goes with this prevailing ideological view is all too often that of people who see themselves as being on the side of the angels against the forces of evil — whether the particular issue at hand is gun control, environmentalism, race or whatever. … The failure of our educational system goes beyond what they fail to teach. It includes what they do teach, or rather indoctrinate, and the graduates they send out into the world, incapable of seriously weighing alternatives for themselves or for American society." –economist Thomas Sowell <http://patriotpost.us/opinion/17925>

Culture

"Not long ago — OK, 50 years ago — Sports Illustrated put athletes on its covers because they did things only Mickey Mantle, Jimmy Brown, Bobby Orr or Wilt Chamberlain could do on the playing field, not in the sack. Now [NBA player] Jason Collins’s sexual affiliation is the biggest news in sports? Does anyone know, or care, how many points per game he scores or how many shots he blocks? No. Being gay and his being willing to announce it to the entire sports world is what’s important now. … I’m sure most of Collins’ family and teammates have known he was gay for years, but because they’re decent and good people who cared about his privacy, they kept the big sports ‘news’ to themselves. This isn’t about sports at all. It’s partly a case of identity politics. That’s why Obama was in such a rush to congratulate Collins on his courage to come out and say he was a proud member of the Democrat Party’s most loyal sex-based constituency. … Gays have been playing pro sports forever. Big deal. No one asked and no one told. Sports should be about winning and teamwork and accomplishment. Owners, coaches and fans don’t care what color their star players’ skin is, what their ethnicities are or who they sleep with — and neither should the rest of us. Wake me up when this embarrassing gay-pride parade is over, please." –columnist Michael Reagan <http://patriotpost.us/opinion/17978>

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Faith and Family

"If we believe America was founded on timeless principles that God wove into the fabric of human existence, then we must put our faith in them and believe they still ring true in good hearts. Secondly, we must employ the mechanism designed to be the most effective for passing them along, namely, small groups. The smallest living organism is the cell; as it divides it multiplies so that within a very short time a single cell has become a tissue, a tissue an organ, multiple organs with specific functions form a body, that is life. So then let us commit to forming these associations, first within our own families, our neighborhoods, our communities. Get a good study guide on the essentials of liberty to guide the discussion. Emphasize action. To ensure success keep Faith In God at the center; more specifically let Jesus Christ be the nucleus of the group to use each individual as His hands, eyes and mouthpiece to bring healing and hope. As you grow in wisdom, action and numbers divide the groups and continue to grow your influence. We didn’t get here overnight and we won’t get it back any faster. Difficult times are ahead; we will need each other and Him now more than ever." –Patriot Post Grassroots contributor Charlie Lyon <http://patriotpost.us/commentary/17962>

Reader Comments

"The reason Obama wants to purge Christians <http://patriotpost.us/alexander/17989/> serious about their faith from the U.S. military is to remove any who would oppose his statist and dictatorial designs. He wants in the military only those who will follow orders from above blindly and without regard to either the Constitution or unalienable rights. Christians in the military are an impediment to his totalitarian plans, which he has been implementing throughout the federal government since he took office." –Bob in Hattiesburg, Mississippi

"Well Court Martial me <http://patriotpost.us/alexander/17989/> then because I won’t stop believing in Christ and telling others the reason for my hope and faith." –Jim in New Haven

"Courts Martial for the Faithful is outrageous <http://patriotpost.us/alexander/17989/> ! The president of the United States is under Oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,’ and with this proclamation he becomes an enemy of our Constitution! I am retired USAF and I would’ve taken a court-martial before denying GOD!" –Harry in Belpre, Ohio

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The Last Word

"So Medicaid, which is going to cost a trillions, has shown in a new study to not improve the physical health of those who have it. Its trillions of dollars and does nothing. So it’s an easy choice to just cut this and save tons of money, right? Nope, the left are promoting how Medicaid improves ‘mental health.’ Trillions of dollars, and people feel better — which is probably just because people feel better thinking they’re covered even though the coverage actually does nothing. So we could just pretend to cover people — placebo coverage — and get the same effect for much cheaper. But the left will never go along with that. If a giant government program is a complete and utter failure, that just means it need to be made even gianter. If there was a government program that just put trillions of dollars in a hole and burned it, the left would go on and on about how much warmth for the poor that program created and how we need to burn even more money. We can’t ever get rid of government programs no matter how useless they are. And that’s why I think the only step is to start to train our kids to build a new, better government after this one collapses." –humorist Frank J. Fleming <http://www.imao.us/index.php/2013/05/medicaid-burning-trillions/>

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!

Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team

*PUBLIUS*

Mail 773 Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Concerning the schools and discipline (see View https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=13822)

And here is an excerpt from a Wiki article on Albert Einstein.

—————————-

When the family moved to Pavia, Einstein stayed in Munich to finish his studies at the Luitpold Gymnasium. His father intended for him to pursue electrical engineering <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_engineering> , but Einstein clashed with authorities and resented the school’s regimen and teaching method. He later wrote that the spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in strict rote learning <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_learning> .

—————————–

To me, part of the problem with the schools is underscored by the above. Certainly discipline is important, but not to the point of reactionary adherence to mindless rules.

I attended my girlfriends sons graduation many years ago. The Valedictorian of the class gave a scathing speech about how the schools suppress creative thought. That fit well into my education experience, and things have gotten worse, not better, since I was at school.

The well disciplined kids who want to learn might actually learn something: but they better want it pretty badly, because the teacher is busy apologizing for disciplining the defiant. I recall when the schools were primarily unfair to the brightest kids. I was one of them. But bright kids have a way of figuring out the system. It’s those who are right around average who need teacher attention, and are likely to fail without it, yet succeed with it.

I know what you mean with this and get where you are coming from, but keep in mind this is about a school system which suspends students for stuff like this.

http://www.newschannel5.com/story/14861326/boy-suspended-over-inhaler

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1998-05-03/news/1998123148_1_christine-airy-middle-school-asthma

http://jonathanturley.org/2012/05/24/students-goes-into-asthma-attack-but-school-nurse-refuses-to-let-him-use-inhaler-without-a-signed-parental-form-nurse-watches-with-inhaler-as-student-collapses/

To me there is a difference between mouthing off and petitioning for redress of grievances.

There is a line between the two where one becomes the other.

Very few Einsteins involved here. I am concerned about the future plumber or book keeper who ends up at MacDonald’s because she can’t read, and she can’t read because the teacher wasn’t able to teach her because Mr. Valentine wanted to socialize with her.

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

I get it, but was Mr Valentine ‘socializing’ or discussing chemical bonding?

The article was not clear to me on that, but it is what I was alluding to.

Having spent my first eight years of growing up in a school system intended for farm worker children before being sent off to a bright kids high school, I can only tell you that this “suppression” of creativity didn’t really happen with me – it was more a case of “learn self discipline or we’ll make you learn it” and that, as it turns out, was probably all to the good. The real problem of bright kids in average schools is that the school work is so easy that they develop sloppy work habits that have to be corrected when they finally reach a place where being bright is not considered a defect and being smarter than the teacher a discipline problem.

But oddly enough here I am not as concerned about the bright kids – we tend to survive once we understand the rules – as I am the normal and even bright normal who really need some school instruction, but who won’t get it because the teacher has other things to do. My suspicion is that if Mr. Valentine wanted to discuss chemical bonding and electron orbits with his classmates the teacher would be overjoyed; the few quotes from the newspaper article indicate that he was more interested in his right to talk back to the teacher than in carbon rings.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a system that didn’t tolerate undisciplined behavior in the classroom, and had the means of enforcement including corporal punishment. I didn’t need a lot of the classroom instruction. I had always read the textbooks ahead of the class discussion and often looked up the matter in the Encyclopedia Britannica, so I didn’t expect to be told anything by my 1-8 grade Normal School graduate teachers anything I didn’t already know. It was pretty clear to me that my mission was to survive, and what I was learning was the rules for doing that. It was a bit of a shock when I got to CBC and found teachers who knew one hell of a lot more than I did about just about everything, and who wouldn’t put up with my usual tactic of keeping just ahead of the class. They not only expected more from me, they made it clear that they would get more, my alternative being painfully worse. Of course dedicated teachers like the Christian Brothers of that era are a bit thin on the ground now. Not extinct, but harder to find.

But the teachers in Capleville were also dedicated, at least to keeping order in the class, and to getting the standards expected by the school district, and while those were not especially high, our Sixth Grade reader had stories that half the high school students in California can’t read. They didn’t get those results because they were all that good or that smart – they got them because they were told they could get them, and they expected them, and they were not going to let the local smart guy – like me – distract everyone else in the class from learning. I might have read more about Sir Walter Scott than anyone in the room including the teacher, but I wasn’t allowed to share my literary insights while Irma Cottanio was reciting, and if I knew more about who The Douglas was than the teacher, that wasn’t the point. The point was that Irma deserved her education as much as I did, even if her ambition was to marry and manage a farm and a household. Of course the teachers weren’t going to let Chuck Holmes pester her either. Discipline was expected and demanded.

I am aware that what we considered an orderly and normal school might be thought by some progressives as an over-disciplined concentration camp insisting on rote learning; but our teachers were at least empowered to keep their classes orderly, and if only a few in the class appreciated the flawed nobility of Roderick Dhu, they all bloody well learned to recite some of Scott’s lines, and if Chuck wanted to waste everyone’s time he soon learned better even if his father had six hundred acres. And if you learn to love The Lady of the Lake a whole new world opens to you. “Seek other cause ‘gainst Roderick Dhu!’

The purpose of a school system is to deliver at school leaving a population who have learned some self discipline, have learned to read, write, and cipher, and learned the basic structure of the civil government. And with luck to have learned something of the national saga and to have some appreciation of the importance of civil order, and to have developed some of the habits of good citizenship. Of course no one thinks that way now.

Incidentally the Los Angeles School District board just voted to forbid suspension of students for defiance, so perhaps we will learn something of what comes of that. I don’t predict that it will be for the good. But perhaps we’ll have more drugs for the boys in the classes.

Educating Damien

I agree that suspending the little xxx probably isn’t a good idea, he probably just enjoys a chance to goof off. Exchanging letters just plain won’t do any good, and what makes these people think the target kiddies even know how to read, anyway? That whole article sounds like something from The Onion. Bring back corporal punishment. A good whupping will get the point across.

Man Mountain Molehill

Well, I wouldn’t put it quite that way but I do think that one reason for investing as much as we do in the public schools is to instill a certain self-discipline into the pupils.

Here’s the "Religion Of Peace" showing exactly how peaceful they are, at a British WWII Military Cemetery in Libya.

Every time a joke and or cartoon is made about the Koran, the whole world turns upside down, and we are all called racists! However, these "peaceful Muslims" appear to do whatever they like and no one says anything.

Watch the video while it’s available, before Obama makes sure it’s removed.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/RtgbvotqVFE?rel=0

Nick

The Fantastic Mr Feynman

Hi Jerry

The BBC recently aired a program to roughly coincide with what would have been Richard Feynman’s 95th Birthday (and coincidentally my 54th birthday).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p016d3kk

You may not be able to watch the video outside of the UK, but I’m sure that it’s going to be available somewhere else online and maybe it will be shown in the US, if it hasn’t been already.

Best wishes

Paul Dove

It plays just fine here. Thanks for pointing it out.

Ice Tsunamis

"… longtime locals told him they couldn’t remember anything similar since the 1950s."

…

"You know you’ve got cement, concrete blocks and steel, and the ice goes through it like it’s just a toothpick," Dennis Stykalo, who also lost a home to the ice, told the CBC. "It just shows the power. There is nothing you can do; you just get out of the way and just watch."

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/13/us/ice-tsunamis/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Perhaps being warmer isn’t as bad as we thought. It certainly beats an ice age. Of course, this will undoubtedly be one of the warmest years on record. If this global warming gets any worse, I’m going to freeze to death.

Braxton S. Cook

I don’t think I have ever seen anything like this before.

‘This Week’ Roundtable on ABC.

George Will, Ret. Gen. James Cartwright, Ruth Marcus, and Jonathan Karl.

It’s nice to see a reasoned discussion and to hear General Cartwright’s opinion.

http://abcn.ws/163iB3F

Regards,

John Harlow

Re: A Little Pre-Ice Age Action

Jerry,

See the video at the end of the brief article. If you have kids around be warned of a spontaneous F-word near the end.

Regards,

George

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/11/still-waiting-for-spring-in-minnesota/

How to spot a murderer’s brain:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/12/how-to-spot-a-murderers-brain

“What are we to do, for example, Eagleman asked, with the fact that "if you are a carrier of one particular set of genes, the probability that you will commit a violent crime is four times as high as it would be if you lacked those genes. You’re three times as likely to commit a robbery, five times as likely to commit aggravated assault, eight times as likely to be arrested for murder and 13 times as likely to be arrested for a sexual offence. The overwhelming majority of prisoners carry these genes; 98.1% of death row inmates do… Can we honestly say that the carriers of those genes have exactly the same range of choices in their behaviour as those who do not possess them? And if they do not, should they be judged and punished by the same standard?"

Of course, one might say that if you are born this way, you have a heightened responsibility to work on curbing your impulses. But then, that is not a very PC answer. Instead, we have:

“Raine’s work is full of this kind of statistic and this kind of question. (One of his more startling findings is the extraordinarily high level of psychopathic markers among employees of a temping agency he studied, which came as no surprise to him. "Psychopaths can’t settle, they need to move around, look for new stimulation," he says.) He draws on a number of studies that show the links between brain development, in particular – and brain injury and impairment by extension – and criminal violence. Already legal defence teams, particularly in the US, are using brain scans and neuroscience as mitigating evidence in the trials of violent criminals and sex offenders. In this sense, Raine believes a proper public debate on the implications of his science is long overdue.”

And then ironically (or perhaps not):

“Raine was in part drawn to his discipline by his own background. In the course of scanning his murderers, Raine also examined his own PET profile and found, somewhat to his alarm, that the structure of his brain seemed to share more characteristics with the psychopathic murderers than with the control group.

“He laughs quickly when I ask how that discovery felt. "When you have a brain scan that looks like a serial killer’s it does give you pause," he says. And there were other factors: he has always had a markedly low heart rate (which his research has shown to be a truer indicator of a capacity for violence than, say, smoking is as a cause of lung cancer). He was plagued by cracked lips as a child, evidence of riboflavin deficiency (another marker); he was born at home; he was a blue baby, all factors in the kind of developmental difficulties that might set his own researcher’s alarm bells ringing.

"So," he says, "I was on the spectrum. And in fact I did have some issues. I was taken to hospital aged five to have my stomach pumped because I had drunk a lot of alcohol. From age nine to 11 I was pretty antisocial, in a gang, smoking, letting car tyres down, setting fire to mailboxes, and fighting a lot, even though I was quite small. But at that age I burnt out of that somehow. At 11, I changed schools, got more interested in studying and really became a different sort of kid. Still, when I was graduating and thinking ‘what shall I research?’, I looked back on the essays I’d written and one of the best was on the biology of psychopaths; I was fascinated by that, partly, I think, because I had always wondered about that early behaviour in myself."

“Despite his unusual brain structure, he didn’t have the low IQ that is often apparent in killers, or any cognitive dysfunction. Still, as he worked for four years interviewing people in prison, a lot of the time he was thinking: what stopped me being on their side of the bars?

“Raine’s biography, then, was a good corrective to the seductive idea that our biology is our fate and that a brain scan can tell us who we are. Even as he piles up evidence to show that people are not the free-thinking, rational agents they like to imagine themselves to be – entirely liberated from the limitations set by our inherited genes and our particular neuroanatomy – he never forgets that lesson. The question remains, however, that if these "biomarkers" do exist and exert an influence – and you begin to see the evidence as incontrovertible – then what should we do about them?

The field is called “neurocriminology.” There is much more in the article.

Ed

This continues a long tradition of trying to find the reasons for criminality. The problem is that a free society has to be built on the premise that people have choices, and are to be held responsible for what they do.

Aristotle teaches us that we learn courage by acting brave. That sums up nicely the deepest belie of Western Civilization: you can choose to act in a way so that you develop desired habits. It is why we have “reform” institutions and places to be penitent, and be rehabilitated (only the Western tradition until recently was that you had to rehabilitate yourself). The assumption in AA is that you have to want to be sober. You may fail, but if you don’t want to succeed you will not. There is a place for will in the divine scheme.

Science continues to undermine this basic belief or to try to do so; but the more it succeeds the more it appears that a free civilization is impossible.

don’t ever speak to a federal agent]

Hi Jerry,

A reminder this is not the country you grew up in.

Protect Yourself from FBI Manipulation (w/attorney Harvey Silverglate) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jgDsbjAYXcQ (7 minutes)

No, it’s not, is it>? The Martha Stewart case hangs over the constitution…

Several houses were destroyed, the Winnipeg Free Press <http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/Ice-destroys-several-homes-along-Da-207043001.html> reports, after "a massive ice floe rose out of Dauphin Lake" in central Canada. One local homeowner described the ice’s arrival as "so powerful that it plowed through his two-storey home, pushing furniture from one bedroom into another. It pushed the bathroom tub and vanity into the hallway."

This kind of reverse-Titanic moment occurred just as the gentleman had sat down to watch TV: "Then he heard the ice coming."

Photos and more:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/Ice-destroys-several-homes-along-Da-207043001.html

The Sound of Silence

Dr Pournelle

Have you noticed what you are not hearing?

Nothing is issuing from the insane asylum that is North Korea.

All the saber rattling earlier this year was for internal consumption. Construct a foreign threat so that the people will be distracted from the fact that they are, you know, starving.

April is the key month. All the food reserves of the previous year have been exhausted and the spring harvest has not come. The rulers of the DPRK rattle sabers to distract the people from their plight.

When the sabers rattle in March, the DPRK will survive. When the sabers rattle in February, the DPRK may survive. When the sabers rattle in January, game over.

Place your bets before the windows close.

Stay tuned for next year’s saber rattling.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

It is quiet over there, isn’t it?

The problem is, no one wants North Korea. At least not all that much.  Germany absorbed the East without too much economic turmoil although it did leave less to give to the Greeks and Cypriots and Italians and Spanish to bail them out so that they can continue to have 6 week vacations.l..

“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things.”

<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/immigration-reform-dossiers/>

I’m not generally a big fan of the ACLU, but in this case, they’re spot-on.

—

Roland Dobbins

The ACLU was not always entirely dominated by its present ideology. An organization dedicated to defense of constitutional liberties ought to be important and popular. But it has to be dedicatged to all of those…

The following was from "The Accident", a story from "More Tales of Pirx the Pilot", by Stanislaw Lem:

"He conjured up that legendary, wordless, mythical situation that everyone – Pirx included – now knew would never come to pass: a revolt of robots. And knowing with a tacit certitude that he would have taken their side, he fell asleep, somehow exonerated."

Wowsers! I see in these two sentences an entire novel. The robots rebel

– _and_some_people_take_their_side_!

I read this in the public library in Memphis about 1940.  I have never forgotten it:

We had expected everything but revolt
And I kind of wonder myself when they started thinking–
But there’s no dice in that now.
I’ve heard fellow say
They must have planned it for years and maybe they did.
Looking back, you can find little incidents here and there,
Like the concrete-mixer in Jersey eating the wop
Or the roto press that printed ‘Fiddle-dee-dee!’
In a three-color process all over Senator Sloop,
Just as he was making a speech. The thing about that
Was, how could it walk upstairs? But it was upstairs,
Clicking and mumbling in the Senate Chamber.
They had to knock out the wall to take it away
And the wrecking-crew said it grinned.
It was only the best
Machines, of course, the superhuman machines,
The ones we’d built to be better than flesh and bone,
But the cars were in it, of course . . .
and they hunted us
Like rabbits through the cramped streets on that Bloody Monday,
The Madison Avenue busses leading the charge.
The busses were pretty bad–but I’ll not forget
The smash of glass when the Duesenberg left the show-room
And pinned three brokers to the Racquet Club steps
Or the long howl of the horns when they saw men run,
When they saw them looking for holes in the solid ground . . .
I guess they were tired of being ridden in
And stopped and started by pygmies for silly ends,
Of wrapping cheap cigarettes and bad chocolate bars
Collecting nickels and waving platinum hair
And letting six million people live in a town.
I guess it was tha, I guess they got tired of us
And the whole smell of human hands.
But it was a shock
To climb sixteen flights of stairs to Art Zuckow’s office
(Noboby took the elevators twice)
And find him strangled to death in a nest of telephones,
The octopus-tendrils waving over his head,
And a sort of quiet humming filling the air. . . .
Do they eat? . . . There was red . . . But I did not stop to look.
I don’t know yet how I got to the roof in time
And it’s lonely, here on the roof.
For a while, I thought
That window-cleaner would make it, and keep me company.
But they got him with his own hoist at the sixteenth floor
And dragged him in, with a squeal.
You see, they coöperate. Well, we taught them that
And it’s fair enough, I suppose. You see, we built them.
We taught them to think for themselves.
It was bound to come. You can see it was bound to come.
And it won’t be so bad, in the country. I hate to think
Of the reapers, running wild in the Kansas fields,
And the transport planes like hawks on a chickenyard,
But the horses might help. We might make a deal with the horses.
At least, you’ve more chance, out there.
And they need us, too.
They’re bound to realize that when they once calm down.
They’ll need oil and spare parts and adjustments and tuning up.
Slaves? Well, in a way, you know, we were slaves before.
There won’t be so much real difference–honest, there won’t.
(I wish I hadn’t looked into the beauty-parlor
And seen what was happening there.
But those are female machines and a bit high-strung.)
Oh, we’ll settle down. We’ll arrange it. We’ll compromise.
It won’t make sense to wipe out the whole human race.
Why, I bet if I went to my old Plymouth now
(Of course you’d have to do it the tactful way)
And said, ‘Look here! Who got you the swell French horn?’
He wouldn’t turn me over to those police cars;
At least I don’t think he would.
Oh, it’s going to be jake.
There won’t be so much real difference–honest, there won’t–
And I’d go down in a minute and take my chance–
I’m a good American and I always liked them–
Except for one small detail that bothers me
And that’s the food proposition. Because, you see,
The concrete-mixer may have made a mistake,
And it looks like just high spirits.
But, if it’s got so they like the flavor . . . well . . .

Stephen Vincent Benet

Preference Cascade, or Fit Of Pique?

Jerry,

"There is a bit of a lull in news about the Benghazi affair." Heh. The White House press corps tore Jay Carney several new ones over Benghazi prevarications today.

The proximate cause was an ABC report that far from one minor stylistic fix as Carney maintains, ABC now has a dozen successive edited versions of the original Benghazi talking points, with much substance removed, along with considerable information about who removed it.

Not news to anyone who’s been following the story with the few outfits going after it before today. But a breakthrough for the mainstream press.

Much as I’d like to think we’re seeing a preference cascade (the crowd all at once says to each other "wow, the Emperor’s naked") it still could just be a temporary fit of pique by the WH press corps over having been massively misled. Never underestimate the MSM’s ability to once again suspend disbelief and cover for this gang, once they’ve vented.

But then there’s also the IRS’s sudden confession that they brought raw partisan politics into evaluating Tea Party non-profit applications last year. Again, no surprise to us curmudgeons, but new to the mainstream.

Maybe the MSM won’t be able to suspend that much disbelief all at once? Nahh – I have great faith in their collective reinsert-head-in-sand skills.

cynically

Porkypine