Category Archives: Mail

Mail 772 Wednesday, May 08, 2013

We have paid a lot of attention to Cosmology recently so this is a mailbag catchup on other subjects. It is a mixed bag on a variety of subjects.

NIMH Delivers A Kill Shot To DSM-5,

Jerry

NIMH Delivers A Kill Shot To DSM-5:

http://www.science20.com/science_20/blog/nimh_delivers_kill_shot_dsm5-111138

“The weakness is its lack of validity.”

About time.

Ed

Re: DSM and NIMH

Jerry,

The DSM might be losing ground.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/514571/nimh-will-drop-widely-used-psychiatry-manual/

Regards,

George

About time indeed. See also http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/psychiatry-dsm-melancholia-science-controversy.html

A new kind of "Chinese knock off"

Pardon the pun, but there are some new Chinese knock offs on the horizon…

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2013/05/rise-drones-china-emerging-new-force-drone-warfare

And I wonder wouldn’t be at all surprised on some future date to fins out that Skynet’s mother tongue is Mandarin or Cantonese.

Gary P.

My son Commander Phillip Pournelle has an essay in the current Proceedings of the US Naval Institute on missile carriers and the future of the fleet which might be relevant here. The Navy is thinking about the problems.

Bear vs. monkey.

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2320745/Bear-forced-ride-bike-sick-circus-stunt-crashes-mauls-monkey-large-crowd.html>

——

Roland Dobbins

When I was a graduate student at the University of Washington I had a job as graduate assistant to a major medical project. I had to take care of monkeys. I developed a lifelong hatred for the little beasts…

Voice Activated Elevator in Scotland

Jerry

What could possibly go wrong?

http://dotsub.com/view/6c5d7514-5656-476a-9504-07dd4e2f6509

Ed

What indeed?

The X-15 Rocket Plane: Implications for Reusable Booster Schedule & Cost (1966) | buffy willow

Jerry

Nice piece on the X-15 project – one of my favorite models when I was a kid:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/the-x-15-rocket-plane-reusable-space-shuttle-boosters-1966/

An interesting bit on reusability:

Station supporters envisioned that reusable spacecraft for logistics resupply and crew rotation would make operating the station affordable. In November 1966, James Love and William Young, engineers at the NASA Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, completed a brief report in which they noted that the reusable suborbital booster for a reusable orbital spacecraft would undergo pressures, heating rates, and accelerations very similar to those the X-15 experienced. <snip>

“Love and Young wrote that some space station planners expected that a reusable booster could be launched, recovered, refurbished, and launched again in from three to seven days. The X-15, they argued, had shown that such estimates were wildly optimistic. The average X-15 refurbishment time was 30 days, a period which had, they noted, hardly changed in four years. Even with identifiable improvements, they doubted that an X-15 could be refurbished in fewer than 20 days.

“At the same time, Love and Young argued that the X-15 program had demonstrated the benefits of reusability. The cost of refurbishing an X-15 in 1964 had, they estimated, come to about $270,000 per mission. In 1964, NASA and the Air Force had accomplished 27 successful X-15 flights. The total cost of refurbishing the three X-15s for those flights had thus totaled $7.3 million.

“Love and Young cited North American Aviation estimates which placed the cost of a new X-15 at about $9 million, then calculated the cost of 27 X-15 missions if the rocket plane had not been made reusable. They found that the all-expendable X-15 program would have cost the United States $243 million in 1964. This meant, they wrote, that the cost of refurbishing the three X-15s amounted to only 3% of the cost of building 27 X-15s and throwing each one away after a single flight.”

When I was at Boeing I developed an admiration for the X-15 and visited Edwards several times to learn more – I was in human factors then, in the 1950’s, and the concern was man in space. But Seattle is a long way from Los Angeles and was much further back in the days before jets. The best way there was to fly to Long Beach Airport and get North American to take you to Edwards on their DC-3 they kept for that purpose. When I got to California I was working on strategic missile forces and didn’t get to see much at Edwards and when I got back to manned space it was in support of Apollo, so I was only an observer of the X-15 program. We learned a lot from it. It’s time for a new reusable manned space X project.

‘Quantum network? We’ve had one for years,’ says Los Alamos,

Jerry

It seems the ads at Los Alamos has a quantum network up and running. It’s hub and spoke, but it is working:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/07/quantum_cryptography_network_los_alamos/

As the article says, “It’s not a perfect system. While it’s relatively scalable within a locale, the hub and spoke system has inherent disadvantages on very large scales, and the authors acknowledge that if the hub is compromised in any way, the messages are insecure. But it’s a hell of a lot further along than anyone else is admitting to in public, and it’s a credit to US national scientists and their sense of discretion that they kept it a secret for this long. As network bragging rights go, this takes some topping.”

Ed

I have seen some of this, mostly back east, and I have actually communicated though a secure quantum link network. Last experience I had it wasn’t ready for actual use, though.

Subject: Penguins in space!

Jerry, you may consider Linux to be little more than a jobs program for gurus, but it appears that NASA is inclined to think differently:

http://training.linuxfoundation.org/why-our-linux-training/training-reviews/linux-foundation-training-prepares-the-international-space-station-for-linux-migration

The article explains that NASA likes the idea of having complete control over the programs in use on the ISS, including the underlying OS so that they can adapt, extend or patch things as needed instead of being stuck with whatever the owners of proprietary software are willing to give them.

Joe Zeff

For much of the life of the Shuttle, the main computer of use to the Astronauts was a Mac laptop; the Shuttle main computer was something like a Z-80 as I recall. I know that Atlantis was built with an obsolete computer system although our Council recommended through the Space Council that they go with something more modern, not just with the computer but much of the other stuff; but they built what amounted to a Columbia clone.

Finally!

Jerry,

In case you haven’t yet heard of it, the lens makers at Zeiss have finally made it possible to buy a round touit. Pic attached.

Warmest regards,

Frank

Stratfor on Nostalgia for NATO:

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/geopolitical-journey-nostalgia-nato

Mr. Friedman ends with this: “I don’t know that NATO can exist without a Cold War. Probably not. What is gone is gone. But I know my nostalgia for Europe is not just for my youth; it is for a time when Western civilization was united. I doubt we will see that again.”

Ed

NATO always was what G Washington called an entangling alliance. During the Cold War it was a necessary component of a Containment strategy, but I do not see why it is needed now.

We’re all gonna die!!! =)

By the late 80’s, I knew it was too late to bomb these people and here we go:

<.>

Senior scientists have criticised the “appalling irresponsibility” of researchers in China who have deliberately created new strains of influenza virus in a veterinary laboratory.

They warned there is a danger that the new viral strains created by mixing bird-flu virus with human influenza could escape from the laboratory to cause a global pandemic killing millions of people.

Lord May of Oxford, a former government chief scientist and past president of the Royal Society, denounced the study published today in the journal Science as doing nothing to further the understanding and prevention of flu pandemics.

“They claim they are doing this to help develop vaccines and such like. In fact the real reason is that they are driven by blind ambition with no common sense whatsoever,” Lord May told The Independent.

“The record of containment in labs like this is not reassuring. They are taking it upon themselves to create human-to-human transmission of very dangerous viruses. It’s appallingly irresponsible,” he said.

</>

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/appalling-irresponsibility-senior-scientists-attack-chinese-researchers-for-creating-new-strains-of-influenza-virus-in-veterinary-laboratory-8601658.html

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Here we have a seriously sick critter. He planned to kidnap, torture, rape, and then eat a small child. He had a dungeon all nicely equipped for the job. Fortunately he was caught.

This is as clear a case of a need for capital "punishment" as a sanitation measure rather than punishment. The guy probably never can be cured. And there seems to be serious risk with letting him live that some Rose Bird type might come along again and turn him loose. If he is dead, that simply cannot happen.

Briton Geoffrey Portway admits US plot to kill and eat child

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22437771

{^_^}

I think I have no comment on this. Perhaps I should. When Possony and I studied precursors to the collapse of a society, or a major revolution, one of the harbingers was an outbreak of bizarre crimes. And now I read today’s headlines.

This was forwarded to me by an academic colleague who I greatly admire, which means that she takes it seriously, so I do:

 

Structure associated with memory formation predicts learning ability

By Meghan Rosen

Web edition: April 29, 2013

A child who is good at learning math may literally have a head for numbers.

Kids’ brain structures and wiring are associated with how much their math skills improve after tutoring, researchers report April 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Certain measures of brain anatomy were even better at judging learning potential than traditional measures of ability such as IQ and standardized test results, says study author Kaustubh Supekar of Stanford University.

These signatures include the size of the hippocampus – a string bean-shaped structure involved in making memories – and how connected the area was with other parts of the brain.

The findings suggest that kids struggling with their math homework aren’t necessarily slacking off, says cognitive scientist David Geary of the University of Missouri in Columbia. "They just may not have as much brain region devoted to memory formation as other kids."

The study could give scientists clues about where to look for sources of learning disabilities, he says.

Scientists have spent years studying brain regions related to math performance in adults, but how kids learn is still "a huge question," says Supekar. He and colleagues tested IQ and math and reading performance in 24

8- and 9-year-olds, then scanned their brains in an MRI machine. The scans measured the sizes of different brain structures and the connections among them.

"It’s like creating a circuit diagram," says study leader Vinod Menon, also of Stanford.

Next, the kids began an intensive one-on-one tutoring program that focused on speedy problem-solving and math skills such as counting strategies and basic arithmetic. After eight weeks and about 15 to 20 hours of tutoring, Menon, Supekar and colleagues tested the students’ math abilities again and compared the kids’ progress with their brain scans.

Overall, tutoring improved the kids’ math skills, and the children with the biggest improvements had big hippocampuses that were well connected to brain regions that make memories and retrieve facts.

"It’s a very interesting and surprising finding," says cognitive neuroscientist Robert Siegler of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

In adults, the hippocampus isn’t all that involved in math, he says. But in kids, "it apparently is involved in math learning."

Supekar thinks the findings could help educators tailor math tutoring strategies to different kids. "Right now, math education is like a one-size-fits-all approach," he says. One day, maybe 10 years from now, Supekar says, scientists might be able to scan children’s brains and place them into programs that cater to their specific mental signatures.

But for now, Menon says, "It certainly behooves us to not give up on children who are slow to learn, and to think of alternate approaches to boost learning."

Citations

K. Supekar et al. Neural predictors of individual differences in response to math tutoring in primary-grade school children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Published online April 29, 2013.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1222154110. [Go to]

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/350018/description/Brain_measurem

ents_predict_math_progress_with_tutoring

I am now reviewing a case history of an ADHD child who was about to be institutionalized, but his father wouldn’t give up; the story is now told by the boy and his father. It is different from Temple Grandin’s story. And that tells us a lot.

Robert Goddard: The Ultimate Migration.

<http://www.bis-space.com/2012/03/23/4110/the-ultimate-migration>

———-

Roland Dobbins

Earth is too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Scientific review and Politics

Jerry

Don’t know if you have seen this but if not here it is.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/05/02/republican-congressman-introduces-bill-to-require-political-approval-of-scientific-papers/

Gordon C. Snelling

I have not had a chance to read this but I will try. Meanwhile it sounds frightening but perhaps I have misconstrued the idea.

The Gunpowder Plot

Dear Jerry :

In retrospect, my testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on the Comprehensive Antiterrorism Act of 1995 seems to have been a waste of time.

The West, Texas explosion tetifies that there is still a lot of ammonium nitrate lying around, and now comes word from the WSJ <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324235304578440843633991044.html> that Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsaraev purchased his explosives legally, anonymously, and in substantial quantities from a New Hampshire fireworks store .

Instead of emulating the patient Unabomber, who clipped the ends off thousands of kitchen matches to fuel his postal bombs, Tsarnaev bought a small number of semi-pro display fireworks:

"William Weimer, a vice president of Phantom Fireworks, said Tamerlan Tsarnaev on Feb. 6 purchased two "Lock and Load" reloadable mortar kits at the company’s Seabrook, N.H., store, just over the line from Massachusetts. Each kit contains 24 shells and four tubes for firing them into the air.

Mr. Tsarnaev paid cash for the kits, which retail for $199.99. The company has turned over records of the purchases to investigators, Mr. Weimer said. Another Phantom Fireworks store sold fireworks used in the failed 2010 Times Square bombing.

It isn’t yet known if the powder from fireworks was used in the Boston bombings, and authorities continue to search for any other explosives purchases and possible accomplices who may have provided materials for the bombs, U.S. authorities said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation already has described other parts of the bombs, which were placed in pressure cookers and packed with nails and BBs.

Each of the parts described so far has innocuous uses and could be purchased easily, showing how a weapon could be built without arousing suspicion."

Russell Seitz

One reason I tend to avoid breaking news. Eventually the truth comes out.

I delayed publishing this until I could get a dialogue and response, but I have run out of time and it ought to be seen.

Gelzinis

Jerry,

This is a response to Ed and his Gelzinis link. I’d first like to say these young men should have the full weight of the law thrown at them. The article is correct. Had they told police about their friends, the MIT officer might be alive today, a police officer would have been spared the agony of surgery and rehabilitation, and Boston might have been able to sleep a little sooner than it did.

All of that said, however, what did anyone expect? Can anyone honestly say they are not afraid of the police? Are not afraid to get involved lest they be accused of being a part of whatever they are reporting on? Martha Stewart was just the very visible fact that our law enforcement now thinks of Americans as subjects; subjects to be bullied and that must submit to any indignity they can think of just to prove we are not "guilty" of something. The Kabuki dance we all do at the airport – we to prove we are not dangerous and they to prove they even care what we’re trying to prove – should be enough to tell all of us that the time of American citizenship has long passed.

I think these young men should be punished for more than obstructing justice. At the same time, I understand why they did what they did. They came from a totalitarian country into an even more totalitarian one. Is there any reason why they should not have been afraid for themselves and for their friends?

Braxton S. Cook

I find myself in the same dilemma. Yes they done bad; and yet we make it dangerous to cooperate with the authorities. More and more the government is ‘them’ not ‘us.”

Cabling

If I recall correctly from a long ago Byte column:

Pournelle, addressing a SCSI issue: "Ninety percent of the time it’s a cable."

Niven: "So you’re checking everything else first?"

Both principles were added to my troubleshooting checklist. Just a quick stroll down memory lane.

Wayne Kurth

Print yourself a pistol

the ‘Liberator’ again!

http://natmonitor.com/2013/05/04/worlds-first-3d-printed-handgun-is-here-congressman-fights-to-extend-ban-on-plastic-firearms/

And how do we regulate that?

Subject: North Korea

Is there some reason why we can’t just offer the office class of the North Korean army, a 20k a year life long stipend if they over throw Kim and turn over the country to the south?

I would guess that Sun Tzu would approve of that strategy. Silver bullets are often effective. Machiavelli would have understood very well.

Mail 770 Wednesday, April 17, 2013

First a few words on security:

WordPress Attack

Dr. Pournelle:

It appears there is an attack against WordPress installations that is placing a phony ‘500’ error page on the site that allows additional commands to be executed. I don’t have all the details yet, but one report indicates that there is a brute-force password guessing attack against the ‘admin’ user of a WordPress site.

The ‘admin’ user is created by default on a WordPress installation; that user has full privileges to the WordPress installation. If the owner has chosen a weak password, or ohe that is easily guessed, then the attacker would get full admin privileges to the WordPress site, including the administrative area.

WordPress login process allows for brute force attacks; an unsuccessful login will just let you try again. There might be some delays if you try brute-force logins, but it is possible to keep on trying a WP login.

The attack will put a phony ‘500.php’ file in your site root (and perhaps other places). So a search for those files might be prudent. Delete any that contain unfamiliar code.

Initially, it looks like many sites that have been successfully attacked are also not current in their WordPress version level. So, prevention would indicate these steps:

1) Create a new ‘admin-level’ user with a strong non-dictionary type password.

2) Log in as that user to ensure that all is OK

3) When logged in as the new admin-level user, demote the user ‘admin’ to the lowest level. Leave the user there just to irritate the hacker.

4) Ensure that your hosting account, and any FTP accounts, have strong passwords. Strongly consider changing FTP passwords.

5) Don’t use an FTP client that stores passwords in plain text. (WinFTP does this.). I recommend WinSCP (open source, free) which encrypts FTP credentials.

6) Ensure your WordPress installation is current. Update all themes and plugins on a regular basis.

And the usual precautions on your home computer: Windows updates, Application updates (Secunia Personal Software Inspector is recommended), uninstall Java (if it is not needed; Javascript is OK), don’t clck or open unfamiliar attachments, etc.

(BTW, your site is OK. I already did the mitigations noted above when I set up the WordPress installation.)

Regards, Rick Hellewell, Security Geek and your faithful web guy

HEAR AND BELIEVE

I view all mail in plaintext and never follow links until I have some reason to assume it’s safe; and I see a lot of intriguing new phishing schemes lately. It’s getting bad out there.

And this just in:

Identity Theft

Hi Jerry,

We hear a lot about identity theft but here’s a statistic to chill the blood, from the Senate committee testimony of National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson on April 16 —

"Yet despite the revamped identity theft victim assistance procedures, more stringent filters, and improved cooperation with the private sector, the volume of identity theft returns continues to grow at an alarming rate. The IRS had more than 1.25 million identity theft cases in inventory as of the end of February 2013, a sharp increase from a year ago, when the volume was less than 235,000 cases."

Then, imagine how many more there are that don’t lead to an IRS contact.

–Mike

Re Dark Matter & Dark Energy

Dr Pournelle,

At <http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1068>, Eric Raymond relates this anecdote:

“In 1992 I was an invited speaker at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Yes, this was five years before I was famous; what I was doing there was a seminar on advanced Emacsing. My sponsor, the astrophysicist Piet Hut, took me around to meet a number of the stellar eminences at the Institute.

“One of them was a cosmologist whose name I don’t remember. We chatted for a while – he was doing interesting work on the apparent quantization of red-shift distributions. Then I said to him, ‘Oh, by the way, I know what dark matter is made from.’

“Eying me dubiously, he said, ‘What?’

“I said, ‘Phlogiston.’

“He damn near fell out of his chair laughing.”

—Joel Salomon

I can I suppose accept dark matter, although it’s a stretch – why isn’t there a lot of it around here, and why isn’t it making the solar system deviate from Newton? – but dark energy isn’t anything I can get my head around. I still believe in experimental evidence rather than the beauty of equations or lack thereof…

Henry Vanderbilt on last weekend’s Space Access conference and the future of man in space:

Despair is a sin, as you’ve mentioned more than once. Worse, in this case it’s an error. We’re actually doing remarkably well as far as development of reusable transport goes, at least compared to where we were fifteen years ago when X-33 had just eaten everything. It’s just that it’s mostly not in the government, most of it subject to the eccentricities of its private sponsors, and much of it grossly underfunded.

That last is my immediate worry – Armadillo has already been set back a year because they couldn’t afford to build the canonical three copies of their "Stig-B" test vehicle, XCOR will shortly be betting the company on the one copy of Lynx they can afford, and even the (relatively) lavishly funded Virgin will have problems if they break their first "SpaceShip 2".

SpaceX’s reusability tests strike me as sincere but still secondary; they’re funded at a level justifiable by the FUD they inspire in competitors, not (yet at least) as something primary to the company. And Blue Origin remains an enigma. What little comes out does not convey to me a sense of urgency, FWIW.

Jess Sponable going back to DARPA is potentially good also, though he’s been frustrated in his attempts to do something useful before. Mitchell Burnside Clapp, by the way, is also at DARPA these days, running an air-launched reusable project called ALASA – he was going to come out and talk about it till his travel budget got sequestered.

My chief hope is still the small startups, the XCORs, Armadillos, and Mastens – they’re the ones most closely focused on low-cost fast-turnaround reusability. Chronically underfunded, as I said. If you know someone who might want to support a non-profit strategic investment fund to the tune of a few tens of millions, I could do a huge amount of good there. (It’d probably make a considerable profit too, in the long run, which could then be applied to the next step outward.)

I’m recovering from a bug that hit me Monday – the perils of being one of your own mike-runners; I effectively traded bugs with 50% of everyone who had a question at the conference. I’ll have to check and see how Tim Kyger is doing; he drove out from Albuquerque to help out this year, and collected the other 50%. Having mike-runners who know the players is priceless, though.

I’m currently reading "Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin – The Age Of Social Catastrophe" by Gellately – part of my last few years walkabout through twentieth century history. Very interesting so far for the tactical details; that sort of thing tends to get glossed over.

Hmm, well, I must be feeling better; I’ve gone on far too long.

Henry

In other words, little has changed, and actually that’s progress. Moore’s Law continues: of the three major fields in space exploration, control and avionics gets better whether we like it or not, structures get stronger and lighter as everyone experiments with materials, and there are advances in reliability and manufacturing of propulsion. Operations improve.

Bob Bussard said a long time ago that we already did the easy stuff. He was prophetic, but we seem through some of that phase. In the 70’s we underestimated how hard things would be, but we also had the costs of the standing army to bear. Now the Navy and Air Force need mission capabilities and NASA doesn’t even pretend to be able to make them. This is the right time for real X program: develop the technology and let industry apply it to mission oriented spacecraft. Some of those missions will turn out to be commercial.

: How NASA brought the monstrous F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life

Here’s an article you may be interested in reading:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the-monstrous-f-1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/

and another related article on the developing F-1B engine:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/new-f-1b-rocket-engine-upgrades-apollo-era-deisgn-with-1-8m-lbs-of-thrust/

– Paul

Rocketdyne F-1 lives!

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the-monstrous-f-1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/

An absolutely brilliant article. Puts many rumors to rest about the plans for Apollo being lost–and underscores yet again how Apollo was an amazing achievement in both design and execution.

I was shocked to hear up-rated F-1B was not only done, but tested.

The details on the gas generator and the turbopumps was astonishing.

Apollo lives!

a wonderful article on bringing the F1 engine back to life

You’ll love it.

Phil

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the-monstrous-f-1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/

Indeed. And they’re cheaper now. In that sense Apollo was an X project. We learned a lot from Apollo. Propulsion wasn’t my thucktun, but I got to watch some of that development. We learned a lot about human factors until NASA froze the spacesuit designs and lost a lot of the progress the Ames people had made. Not lost forever, though.

And I would love to have some reports on this one:

Space program simulation game

I thought that you may find this interesting. From the review; “You’re given rocket parts, a space center, a solar system of planets and moons, and you’re left to find your own fun. Orbit the planet? Go to the moon? Throw a kerbanaut into the sun? Build a space-jet? Make a giant tower of fuel tanks and blow them up? Whatever.”

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=19396

Edward Armstrong

If I get a chance I’ll try it, but perhaps someone has more time…

SAGE,

Jerry

Cold War-era command center that once guarded the nation up for sale in Cicero, NY:

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/04/cold_war-era_command_center_th.html

And why is this interesting? It’s an old SAGE complex.

“Keeping with the goal of survivability, the buildings have no windows. Not a single one. From the outside, they look like big concrete bunkers that could survive nearly anything the old Soviet Union could have thrown at it.” “Evertz said records storage is still probably the best use for the buildings.”

Kind of a follow-up to last week.

Ed

I recall visiting operating SAGE installations. They did it all with brute force.

Looking at the Rocketdyne F-1 Engine Again

Jerry,

Very interesting article.

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the-monstrous-f-1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/>

"….Watching the test

On the morning of February 20 I found myself perched on a set of metal bleachers under an iron-gray Huntsville sky, with the thermometer reading 33ºF-quite a bit cooler than this Texas boy is used to enduring, especially since the wind wouldn’t stop gusting. The payoff was that the observation area sat only a short distance from the gas generator test stand. Through a clearing in a row of evergreens and scrub, separated from us by a dirt path, I saw the test stand itself: a jungle-gym pile of metal and pipes, with personnel scurrying around to make last-minute adjustments.

The gas generator test firing I was there to witness was neither the first nor the last, but it still drew a hefty crowd of folks-civil servants, family members, and no small number of Dynetics/PWR employees. As the clock ticked down toward firing, we packed ourselves into the rickety bleachers and the buzz of conversation gradually quieted; I focused on holding my camera steady and trying not to touch any of the exposed metal of the heavy (and freezing) telephoto lens.

And see:

New F-1B rocket engine upgrades Apollo-era design with 1.8M lbs of thrust <http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/new-f-1b-rocket-engine-upgrades-apollo-era-deisgn-with-1-8m-lbs-of-thrust/>

Gallery: Behind the scenes at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center <http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/gallery-behind-the-scenes-at-nasas-marshall-space-flight-center/>

More on the F-1B monster. If we need them we can build them.

* * *

Fast trip to Mars

Interesting news: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/10/nasa_fusion_engine_fast_mars_trip/

Michael Lund Markussen

airplanes, cell phones and Ordnung.

One more email on using cell phones/electronic devices on airplanes and Ordnung.

Recently I took a flight on American airlines from Atlanta to Miami. We stopped short of the gate and the pilot announced that another plane was still at our assigned gate and we would wait just short of the gate until it was free. You could see the gate and plane. I was sitting in an aisle seat. A man on the other side aisle seat and two rows up, pulled out a cell phone and started to make a call. The stewardess scurried up to him and told him to turn it off. She said that Federal regulations prohibit using cell phones until the cabin doors were opened. She went on to say that he was endangering our lives because the phone could cause problems with the avionics. He laughed at her and said we can see the gate, if my phone messes up the avionics, tell the pilot to maintain current altitude and go to VFR. I started laughing (remember we are sitting on the ground), getting a glare from the stewardess. At that point she threatened to have security arrest him when he deplaned for interfering with the flight crew, if he did not comply. He wisely turned the phone off while shaking his head at the stupidity.

Mike J.

Wise move on his part. The flight attendants aren’t engineers…

a case of importance and horror

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2013/04/13/gosnellgate/?singlepage=true

The main stream media is suppressing it so that people don’t question their pro-choice stance.

Phil

Boston Marathon Bombing

Another possible connection; Israel’s Independence Day began at sunset on April 15. Allowing for time zone changes, the bomb went off just about the time that Independence Day began in Jerusalem. (In the Hebrew calendar, the new "day" begins at sunset.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Ha%27atzmaut

Ken Mitchell

Presumably someone will come take credit for it. We’ll just have to wait.

It’s Tax Time

Hello Jerry,

"It’s tax week, and I’m up to the ears."

When a citizen of your undoubted competence is ‘up to their ears in taxes’ for a week (or more), trying to comply with a tax code that NO ONE understands, it kinda reminds me of this, from ‘Dr. Floyd Ferris’:

"“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt.”

I think that ‘Dr. Ferris’ would be very pleased with the ‘progress’ that the US has made in the 56 years that it has been ‘progressing’ since he made the above observation in 1957. The tax code provides a prime example of WHY.

But, as we have learned to our sorrow, the ‘progressives’ who now rule us can always find new facets of our lives which require additional governmental ‘progress’, so they continue beavering away, apparently ad infinitum. One thing about progressives: they are all about progress, but as long as there is ONE citizen out there who insists on inhaling and exhaling on his own schedule, they will never have ‘arrived’.

Bob Ludwick

I won’t argue. Liberals are worried that someone, somewhere, is doing something without permission. That was Bill Buckley’s mot juste a long time ago. It seems to be true, but add that they worry that someone is doing something without paying a tax on it.

This should have been posted last week, but I was busy.

debt limits and hyperventilation

Dear Mr. Pournelle;

I’ve been reluctant to comment on a recent posting, but it continues to disturb me. To quote several paragraphs:

"You may get death threats, so many you’ll lose count, and there may well be actual attempts on your life. Don’t forget, the Chicago gang is in town and they play very rough. The more public you are, the less they may target you. The CorruptMedia will oppo-research every hidden nook and cranny of your life to smear and expose whatever dirt they can find on you.

You must understand that America now has a government run by gangsters – by crooks, thieves, looters, and thugs who will be utterly ruthless in ruining you if you try to be in their way. Putin’s Russia, Chavez’s Venezuela, has come to America; and the Chicago gang and the cartels have come to D.C.

So if you don’t have the courage to band together and stand up to them, quit now. They can’t spend money you don’t give them. They will do whatever it takes, legal or illegal, to force you to give it to them."

I’m aware that you noted it needed to be toned down; thank you. However, I think extravagant rhetoric like this is highly destructive. As citizens, we are NOT each other’s enemies; rhetoric like this seems to me to serve no purpose except to estrange us.

Also, I note that the original posting was apparently anonymous. My experience is that anonymous letters deserve neither attention nor publicity. They are not an invitation to discussion; there’s no way to reply. They’re more on the order of a tantrum.

Regarding the actual topic of the note: while I agree that spending needs to be brought under control, I believe that the time to do that is *before* we spend the money, not after. Anyone considering not raising the debt limit enough for us to pay the bills ought to consider the probable unintended consequences of such a strategy.

Okay, we’ll be paying the bills with borrowed money. That irritates me; but, again, the time to fix that is before we make the expenditures. Not honoring our debts is *not* heroic; it would simply mean that the "full faith and credit" of the United States was thenceforth worthless. The consequences of such a declaration would, I think, be rather abruptly ruinous.

Thank you for your consideration —

Allan E. Johnson

Something like this is needed once in a while…

Scott Turow’s take on the ‘publishing revolution’

Jerry:

I came across this article in my daily readings and it appears that the American author is indeed becoming an endangered species.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/opinion/the-slow-death-of-the-american-author.html?pagewanted=all&_r=3&

Mr. Turow’s conclusion is a bit chilling –

"Last October, I visited Moscow and met with a group of authors who described the sad fate of writing as a livelihood in Russia. There is only a handful of publishers left, while e-publishing is savaged by instantaneous piracy that goes almost completely unpoliced. As a result, in the country of Tolstoy and Chekhov, few Russians, let alone Westerners, can name a contemporary Russian author whose work regularly affects the national conversation.

"The Constitution’s framers had it right. Soviet-style repression is not necessary to diminish authors’ output and influence. Just devalue their copyrights"

John L.

I am going to leave this in the queue because I still have hopes of commenting on it, but it has waited long enough. I don’t know the current status of Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak in Russia today. It is a chilling thought. Turow is president of the author’s guild. I have not noticed significant comment on this from SFWA.

And we end with

A Coyote Tale…

The Governor of California is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and attacks the Governor’s dog, then bites the Governor.

The Governor starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie "Bambi" and then realizes he should stop because the coyote is only doing what is natural.

He calls Animal Control. Animal Control captures the coyote and bills the State $200 testing it for diseases and $500 for relocating it.

He calls a veterinarian. The vet collects the dead dog and bills the State $200 testing it for diseases.

The Governor goes to hospital and spends $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote and on getting his bite wound bandaged.

The running trail gets shut down for 6 months while Fish & Game conducts a $100,000 survey to make sure the area is now free of dangerous animals.

The Governor spends $50,000 in state funds implementing a "coyote awareness program" for residents of the area.

The State Legislature spends $2 million to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently eradicate the disease throughout the world.

The Governor’s security agent is fired for not stopping the attack. The State spends $150,000 to hire and train a new agent with additional special training regarding the nature of coyotes.

PETA protests the coyote’s relocation and files a $5 million suit against the State.

TEXAS:

The Governor of Texas is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out and attacks his dog.

The Governor shoots the coyote with his State-issued pistol and keeps jogging. The Governor has spent $0.50 on a .45 ACP hollow point cartridge.

The buzzards eat the dead coyote.

And that, my friends, is why California is broke and Texas is not.

Mail 769 Tuesday, April 02, 2013

One of the lessons I learned from Katrina was that the banks might be inaccessible, and for an extended time. I was switching from one card to another right before the storm, and so was lower than normal on cash on hand when the whole state of Mississippi lost power. Being from the Gulf Coast, my bank was simply off-line, even when I was far enough away to get back online or find a working ATM. The lesson I learned was to keep an envelope locked away with a thousand or so in cash to cover requirements while things are broken. From watching Cyprus, I’m thinking I’m going to up that amount, just in case.

Graves

A number of people, having contemplated the Cyprus affair, have reached similar conclusions.

Hell’s Bunnies

Dear Jerry:

It was an eventful weekend for the San Diego Highway Patrol as well as the North Korean Army:

http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2013/04/and-in-related-development.html

—

Russell Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics Harvard University

Will the singularity be a carbon-based life form?

If graphene becomes the new base material for computers 10X faster than the silicone chips now in use; If graphene takes an expected 30 years to reach common use; if 30 years is the constant expectation of how long to reach singularity; does this mean the expected true AI is gonna be a carbon-based life form?

http://www.kusi.com/video?clipId=8716717&autostart=true

V/r,

Rose

Actually that makes a great deal of sense. Thanks.

WisCon’s radical feminist Failfandom Brigade Gets My April Fool’s piece yanked.

Hi Jerry!

I sold science fiction website Locus Online an April Fools piece (like I do every year), titled "WisCon Makes Burqas Mandatory for All Attendees." This was an obvious reference WisCon’s decision to withdraw a Guest of Honor invitation to Elizabeth Moon over her extremely gentle criticisms of Islam.

I was expected the permanently disgruntled to take offense. What I wasn’t expecting was that Locus would cave into pressure and force the piece to be taken down within a few hours.

Details here:

http://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=16802

I would really like to see The Streisand Effect here…

—

Lawrence Person

I am not sure I should comment. I do tend to believe people who insist that they aren’t kidding when they say they want to kill me. On the other hand, I do not do April Fool stories.

SAGE

Dear Dr. Pournelle, this is probably old news to you, but I found this fascinating. The largest computer ever built: SAGE

https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/the-largest-computer-ever-built/

James Snover

It certainly was. It worked pretty well for what it was intended to do, too. A lot of SF authors got their notions of what a big computer would look like from having seen Iliac and SAGE.

Jerry

Here is a long piece on How Samsung Became the World’s No. 1 Smartphone Maker:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-28/how-samsung-became-the-worlds-no-dot-1-smartphone-maker

Quite good.

Ed

Thanks

Phinergy demonstrates aluminum-air battery capable of fueling an electric vehicle for 1000 miles

http://phys.org/news/2013-03-phinergy-aluminum-air-battery-capable-fueling.html

This is pretty interesting. The comments following seem a bit skeptical at least, but seem short sighted to me. I just checked and aluminum is under 1$/lb, and that factors in the energy costs for production noted as a problem. But that’s no problem if their claims are true as that with this technology you could drive 1000 miles for about 55 bucks worth of aluminum, and even if that’s for a Prius class car that is pretty good as that equates to the equivalent of about 75MPG by my calculations, and the Prius only gets 55 or so.

It’s a good way from being commercial, but it would make for an interesting transportation system. Aluminum is a very common element; of course reducing it from ore requires a lot of power. In an energy rich society aluminum would be a cheap enough battery.

Observations About Fusion’s Future

I ran across this article published in Forbes (links below) what struck me are three observations:

1) Fusion seems to be gaining some level of credibility beyond the physics labs. Whether this is warranted or not is still very much up in the air. Certainly no one has designs or technologies that are remotely ready for commercial use.

2) The unquestioned assumption that government, indeed only the federal government can successfully tackle this problem. Now while there are times where government programs can and have been very successful ( TVA, Apollo, Manhattan etc ). In the past, our expectation has always been that private enterprise should lead the way. I don’t know which I find more troublesome: the assumption that it must be a government project, or the fact that this assumption is completely unchallenged and unquestioned.

3) Given the past 30 yrs of Federal Government projects, I can think of no better way to ensure that we will NEVER sell the first kilowatt of fusion power, than to hand the project over to Washington DC. Now if DC were to offer an X Project style $10B to the first commercial company to generate and sell 50MW of fusion derived power for 1 year we might get somewhere. of course that approach won’t happen today.

A belated Happy Easter to you and your Family,

Tony

A Challenge to America: Develop Fusion Power Within a Decade from the supposedly non-partisan American Security Project

http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2013/04/02/a-challenge-to-america-develop-fusion-power-within-a-decade/?ss=business%3Aenergy

"This article is by Norman R. Augustine and Gary Hart. Norman Augustine is a board member of the American Security Project, a nonpartisan public policy and research organization, and has been chairman of the Council of the National Academy of Engineering. Gary Hart is a former senator from Colorado and is chairman of the American Security Project.

America’s economy and security depend upon reliable sources of power. Over the next few decades, almost all of the power plants in the U.S. will need to be replaced, and America’s dependence on fossil fuels presents serious national security concerns. They sap our economy, exacerbate climate change, and constrict our foreign policy. Our new found boom in natural gas and oil production will ease but not eliminate these underlying issues. …"

Tony Sherfinski

Max Hunter used to say that free enterprise was wonderful, but an American herd of dinosaurs headed in the right direction was an awesome sight. For an example think of D-Day. Commercial fusion has been about thirty years away for the last fifty years.

Dane-geld

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I hope you enjoyed the previous letter I sent you describing the 9-year-old in DC. It warms my heart to know that thinking is taught to some, at least. There’s hope for the future.

At any rate, I want to disagree somewhat. You once again posted Kipling’s "Dane-Geld" poem in response to the continued buyoff of North Korea.

I believe there may be a flaw in both Kipling’s poem and your analysis: The assumption that if you fight the Danes they go away.

That may work well if you live on a remote island which is poor compared to other, more desirable targets. It didn’t work at all for the Byzantines.

http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Strategy-Byzantine-Empire/dp/0674062078

The Byzantines were not the English. They bordered the Central Asian steppe. They learned there wasn’t any point to great military victories, because even a victory left the winner that much poorer in lives and money to contend with the next threat, which would come over the horizon sure as sunrise in a few years or decades.

When you have no natural barriers, barriers must be made of men. And if you could co-opt your enemies to act as barriers through money and cunning diplomacy, that allows you to save your strength for a battle that actually needs to be fought.

So Kipling’s strategy is not the right answer in all times and all places. It worked very well indeed for medieval England but didn’t work at all for medieval Byzantium.

I believe in our own time our situation is much closer to Byzantium’s than England’s. Air travel ensures that even a small band of idiots with boxcutters can perpetrate an act of war in the heart of our greatest city. Our enemies are worldwide, and are best fought locally by their own countrymen. Which means the "war on terror" must be a war of diplomacy, blackmail, special operations, and payoffs to the right people.

Same with North Korea. I think the world would be a much better place if we liquidated the regime and made it part of South Korea. This would, however, mean war with China. And compared to war with China continual payoffs of a bully are the softer option.

Then, too, it’s not the situation that dictates strategy but the men who must implement it. Byzantium was a centralized bureaucracy with extremely high taxes. This crippled their production both of material resources and fighting age men. We know this because the Byzantines were barely able to hold Anatolia, but when the Ottomans took it over they used its resources to conquer half of Europe and hold it for hundreds of years.

A centralized bureaucracy in which the population watches chariot races produces a very different kind of man than you would find in the island on which Magna Carta was signed. I leave it to you to determine which more closely fits the modern United States.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

It is certainly the case that silver bullets are often effective; Kipling was stating a general principle (and one that it would be well to have others believe of you in most cases). He wasn’t always correct in his assumptions. Indeed, there are no simple rules of statecraft, particularly if you are in the empire business.

China is the key player in the Korean business. Korea is certainly more within the Chinese sphere of influence than in ours. China can’t really afford to fiancé the rebuilding of North Korea; and if South Korea does that as part of unification, China finds itself with strangers on its borders. One way out is for China to negotiate: they’ll help South Korea unify the peninsula in exchange for throwing the Americans out of Korea entirely. China gains a true neutral on its border. How good a deal that would be for South Korea is not easily determined, nor is it really a US decision. China was a dependent kingdom, not exactly subject to China, but certainly part of the Chinese sphere and nominally somehow a part of the Chinese hegemony. Symbolically China could display dragons in the throne room; Korea could not, for that would be an assertion of independence.

But the Korean throne room is huge, and the throne stood in the middle of the reception hall. Those being received by the Korean King and Queen stood at the edge of the room under a large tapestry roof. From where the Chinese minister Plenipotentiary stood he could see that there were not dragons on display in the throne room. Of course there was a dragon. It was above his head, above the tapestry.

But of course this subtlety was not unknown to Chinese Imperial intelligence; how could it not be? They knew the dragon was there. The Koreans knew the Chinese knew the dragon was there. But it was to the interest of China to ignore this so long as the Koreans did not parade it. Subtlety upon subtlety. I make no doubt that something of this sort will happen.

Mail 768 Thursday, March 28, 2013

Every now and then I am reminded that I covered a pile of subjects long ago and most of that remains available if a bit obscured. I recently had reason to dig about in my old Reports, and found this one which is still quite current: The Voodoo Sciences

Things That Go Thump In The Easter Parade

Dear Jerry :

What stands four feet tall, weighs fifty pounds, and has a price on its head in North Korea?

The Easter Bunny:

http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-rabbit-wars-if-kim-jong-il-seems.html

—

Russell Seitz

You just can’t help some people…

Morale: Korean Roulette,

Jerry

Apparently the South Koreans have finally come up with a way to deter Northern aggression – threatening statues:

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmoral/articles/20130328.aspx

An interesting notion, akin to building monuments.

Ed

Interesting. Let us hope it works. Of course the North Korean system reminds me of Kipling

It has been a while since I put up a copy of this. It’s time again:

Dane-Geld
A.D. 980-1016
By
Rudyard Kipling

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: –
“We invaded you last night–we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ‘em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: –
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: –

“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!”

Actually last time I put that poem up I was remarking about another set of barbarians. They might even be interesting. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=1355

As if we didn’t know – Jerry,

None of this will come as a surprise to you or your readers. This is a committee hearing in the Washington state senate. It’s 111 minutes long, but worth it.

http://www.black-and-right.com/2013/03/28/the-br-thursday-movie-3/#disqus_thread

The link is to a blog and I couldn’t discover the original video. The News Tribune article has comments mostly from those critical of Dr. Easterbrook, but, predictably, little criticism of his data. Senator Ranker couldn’t seem to get his mind around the fact that Dr. Easterbrook was using "raw", original data while he was looking at "corrected" data — data that have been changed (read "falsified") and then presented to the public as genuine and valid. "Who are you going to believe — me or your lying eyes?"

A Google search on Don Easterbrook shows an abundance of links that clearly attempt to discredit him. About what you’d expect.

Richard White

Austin, Texas

Quite a bit longer than I have time to watch. Dr. Easterbrook is a highly qualified but elderly geologist who predicted in 2006 that actual global temperatures would be lower than those predicted by the IPCC. So far he is right. http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/

His view is that Earth temperatures are cyclical, and we have reached a period when they will start downward again. I think that’s a good summary. My own view is that Earth temperatures are cyclical – heck we know that they have been higher and lower than at present in historical times, and far higher and lower in geological times – but we don’t really know what causes the cycles or where we are in them; we simply haven’t been keeping good records for long enough to have much confidence in our inferences.

Re: Zuckerman’s Article

Jerry,

I’m not certain of the sources, but I saw a report on the news last week to the effect the the $85 billion sequester is not $85 billion this year, nor all at home. The report was that ~$44-45 billion hits this year and the remaining next year. Further, that out of the ~$44-45 billion, $22 billion are domestic spending. So Zuckerman’s note that sequestration is taking certain monies out of the economy, "including $85 billion this year alone" might be well off the mark.

Is foreign aid part of the US economy? Recent complaints that the US Government just released $500 million to the Palestinians (I am not sure to which entity) is certainly thought provoking.

Back to Zuckerman’s article, since when is a reduction in an increase reasonably called (closely paraphrasing) ‘taking out’? The reductions under Sequestration are not cuts, despite what most politicians tend to call them. The Administration, in managing the spending adjustments under Sequestration, is simply deciding where to spend how much more than last year. Without sequestration the increase would be larger.

The monies Zuckerman refers to as being taken out of the economy via reduced federal spending this year and over the next 10 years under sequestration are actually not even in the economy at present. The monies in question would be spent on credit. That poses problems that you have discussed at times. Paying for that spending via taxes also poses problems, as it removes the additional money from the hands of taxpayers.

Whether either one of those alternatives is better than spending less is a different question. I am concerned that the rhetoric used by politicians gives a misleading impression of what is occurring, and that is made worse by others just giving in and using the same terminology. I know that you don’t, but Zuckerman did. Whatever good points he made, we should recognize that even under Sequestration the federal government is still spending more than it did last year, and that a great deal of what it is spending is borrowed.

Regards,

George

It is easy to fall into the fallacy of believing that a cut is an actual cut, not just raising the budget less than we said we were going to do it. Many readers simply cannot believe that: that a continuing resolution actually means raises and expansions in spending. And of course “entitlements” are not only not cut, but are not subject to lowering the raising in spending levels built into them.

: Roomba dust-bust bot bods one step closer to ROBOBUTLERS .

Jerry

It’s after March 21, so it must be The Door Into Summer. “At last week’s GPU Technology Conference in California, a team from iRobot claim to have developed the first real-time generic object recognition algorithm:”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/26/object_recognition/

The object recognition algorithm is “based on the Deformable Part Model (DPM), which is based on the idea that objects are made of parts, and the way those parts are positioned in relation to one another is what defines a person from a chair or a car from a boat.” Easy to say, but hard to do: “Running DPM is highly compute-intensive. Each pixel requires about 100,000 floating-point operations, 10,000 reads from memory and 1,000 floating-point values stored. A VGA image consumes 10 billion floating-point ops, loads a billion floats and stores 100 million. For more context, using the LINPACK benchmark as a metric, an iPad 2 can crank out 1.65 billion floating-point ops a second, while a middling desktop i5 system can drive around 40. So while it’s compute-intensive, it’s not insurmountable.”

“Not surprisingly, the concepts and maths that are the foundation of the DPM are highly complex. But they make the DPM robust when dealing with viewing angles, different scales, cluttered fields of view, and other visual noise that would confound other algorithms. After the software is trained, which consists of showing the model about 1,000 objects in order to learn that particular class of objects, it can identify complex objects with a high rate of accuracy. As long as you don’t need to do it quickly, that is.” Lots more stuff in the link.

Robert [Heinlein] would have loved this. But I don’t think he thought it would be this hard.

Ed

Where science fiction writers get it wrong is in underestimating how hard it is to do it the first time, but also not understanding that once we have done it technology tends to make it easier and cheaper. As we pointed out in The Strategy of Technology, http://baen.com/sot/ there is a sort of Moore’s law associated with nearly every advancing technology field (although of course not based on the number of transistors you can put in a given area on a chip). Technology advances in S curves, slow growth at first, then rapid rising to what looks like exponential growth, then a slowing of the acceleration at some point. Robotics are at the lower knee and can be expected to have near exponential growth now.

It won’t always be this hard.

British Natural Gas Shortage

Jerry:

The British have ‘driven into the ditch’ with their AGW based policies, and are running out of natural gas. The video link to a several year old talk by MP and former energy secretary Milibrand is revealing.

Even worse than ‘bad science’ is believing it and basing public policy on it. NG Shortage <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/25/uk_energy_crisis_illustrated/>

Chris C

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. California is very much in the same hole. Apparently there is an epidemic of energy blindness in the District of Columbia as well. We’re all right, Jack. We’ve got ours…

This came in last November after the election and got lost. I recently saw it in a vain attempt to clean up old mail.

Two years is your probable limit

Sent to me, author unknown. This may need to be "toned down" a little, but it’s the thought that counts.

An Open Letter to the Incoming Republican House Members of the 113th Congress

Dear GOP House Members and Members-Elect:

Congratulations to you all for surviving the absurd calamity of November 6th. You need to know what’s in store for you.

To put it bluntly, you have two years to politically live as the House Majority.

You are going to be demonized and destroyed by the Chicago Gangsters who run the White House and the presstitutes of the CorruptMedia. Your chances of retaining your majority in 2014 are 0%.

The question is: What are you going to do with these two years? Realize that the political outcome will be the same no matter what you do. While many of you may individually survive and be reelected in 2014, collectively your majority will be gone and you’ll all be just minority schmucks.

So if you plan to cringe, compromise, and cooperate with the gangsters just to be reelected as a minority schmuck, why not just resign now and collect your pension rather than continue a charade in order to keep your perks of power for a little while longer, and all that while you’ll have to look into the mirror every morning and see a coward?

Why not, then, see someone of courage in that mirror instead? There is a power that only you – a majority of members of the House – have that neither the Senate, the Resident nor any of his agencies, nor even the Supreme Court has. If you choose to exercise it, you will be feared and respected, instead of being Obama’s poodles.

But far more importantly, you will have done your patriotic duty to protect our country from the lethal illicit damage Obama is poised to and will inflict upon it.

The power the House Majority uniquely has is the Other Golden Rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules. Article I Section 7 of the Constitution states it very clearly and without ambiguity: "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives."

The Resident with his ill-gotten Executive Orders, no-basis Czars, multitude of agencies and departments, Harry Reid’s Senate, the Supreme Court, no part of the vast US Federal Government has the Constitutional authority to spend a dime that the House don’t give them. You all (The House), of course, know this. What is required of you now is to act on it.

The day after the Catastrophe of November 6, Harry Reid loudly proclaimed that the Federal Government will soon require the debt ceiling raised another $2.4 trillion, and that when the time comes to do so, "We’ll raise it."

<http://cnsnews.com/news/article/harry-reid-hiking-debt-limit-18794t-we-ll-raise-it>

The question to ask Mr. Reid is: "What do you mean "we, Harry (and every other Senator has no say in the matter)?

If you, the House Majority do not vote to raise the debt ceiling, it is not raised, no matter what temper tantrums Harry or the Resident have or threats they make. Pelosi either; buy her some more cover up and dismiss her to the ladies room.

Right now, as you read this, your children and grandchildren – in fact, every single American under 18 – is saddled with over $216,000 of federal debt <http://cnsnews.com/news/article/4-yrs-private-college-130468-median-priced-existing-home-173100-us-debt-american-under> they will be expected to pay off. They can’t, they won’t, and it is immoral in the extreme to expect them to. Their debt has to be defaulted upon. The way to start is to refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Oh, and by the way, speaking of debt; there has not been a budget since the usurper moved into the White House. Guess what else? It isn’t really the debt that should be the focus. Why don’t you take a look at something called the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). This is the under the table set of books that shows where the bullion is really hidden and I would not be surprised if there is not enough ill-gotten loot in there to pay off the debt.

Just to be clear – when I say you have two years left to live politically, that’s a best case scenario. Unless you roll over and become Obama’s poodles, being a Republican Congressman may be the most dangerous job in America.

You may get death threats, so many you’ll lose count, and there may well be actual attempts on your life. Don’t forget, the Chicago gang is in town and they play very rough. The more public you are, the less they may target you. The CorruptMedia will oppo-research every hidden nook and cranny of your life to smear and expose whatever dirt they can find on you.

You must understand that America now has a government run by gangsters – by crooks, thieves, looters, and thugs who will be utterly ruthless in ruining you if you try to be in their way. Putin’s Russia, Chavez’s Venezuela, has come to America; and the Chicago gang and the cartels have come to D.C.

So if you don’t have the courage to band together and stand up to them, quit now. They can’t spend money you don’t give them. They will do whatever it takes, legal or illegal, to force you to give it to them.

If you can’t say "No" to raising the debt ceiling, if you can’t Defund Obamacare and the EPA and Obama’s steady stream of illicit Executive Orders, if you can’t refuse to appropriate money for more Food Stamps and Obama’s crony capitalist subsidies, quit now.

But if you can say "No", if you can Defund, then you will be heroes to at least half of America, the half that stands for honesty, decency, and protecting our children’s future. The numbers who view you as heros will grow annually. Make us proud or be gone. This is your chance to be heroes – or to be schmucks. Make these next two years the time you live up to the character and courage of America’s Founders.

Right now, history has chosen you to be America’s only hope to avoid her falling into destitution and tyranny. Live up to it. It will take more courage than you ever thought it possible for you to have. Reach down deep inside for the best within you. America’s future depends on it. The weight of history is on your shoulders. Stand up straight and accept the burden.

Minor edits by sender

Middle Class Rule  Jerry,

I’ve been thinking on western-style representative democracy and why it works (when it works) for a while now. The key, I think, is that the majority of a country’s electorate be middle-class. That is to say, people who possess the goods of fortune in moderation, and who have a culture emphasizing earning those goods rather than pillaging them – people who will not consistently vote en masse for economically destructive policies.

Countries where such middle-class types are a minority, if most fortunate will end up ruled by an autocracy whose good economic management grows that middle class to a majority capable of stable rule.

South Korea comes to mind, as do Chile, Spain and Taiwan. Brazil.

Turkey still has a good chance. Iran might get back on that path if it ever shakes off the mullahs. China may well be on that path, if the Party doesn’t wreck things hanging on past its time.

The somewhat less fortunate ones end up with, via revolution, "one man one vote, once", populism, or some combination of these, an autocracy that will hobble the economy and growth of the middle class, out of some mix of incompetence and buying support from the poor majority. The examples, alas, are numerous.

(The really unlucky ones end up ruled by ideological fanatics who devastate their economies and people. Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, North Korea under its bastard hybrid offspring of Stalin and the Imperial Japanese Army occupation…)

This brings me to the "Arab Spring". The sorry results of supporting overthrow of the existing autocracies, from the above viewpoint were highly predictable – none of these countries has close to a middle class voting majority. Egypt arguably had an autocracy that wanted to support its middle class, albeit not very competently. (Egypt’s middle class minority is large and active enough that the Army may yet ally with them and re-suppress the Islamists.) Libya had an autocracy that at least imposed stability, its economic incompetence compensated for by oil revenue. (A pattern much echoed in the Arabian peninsula.)

My next stop, unfortunately, is right here at home. The US has enjoyed a solid middle-class ruling majority (albeit by means of property qualifications for voting in the early days) for its entire history.

This may now be coming to an end – the US middle class over the last century has been under enormous cultural pressure, with damage accumulating fast in recent decades. The education and common sense to avoid voting for economically destructive measures can no longer be taken for granted.

Since 2008, massive economic pressure has been added. The permanent underclass, "low-information voters" – whatever you call it, it’s growing fast. We may get one last chance when things get bad enough to reunite what’s left of our middle class against destructive policies, but absent reforms deep enough to reverse the overall trend, our long era of prosperous stability is coming to an end.

Porkypine

Aristotle told us that the only stable democracy is rule by the middle class, which is defined as those who possess the goods of fortune in moderation. It was clear to him that enormous discrepancies in wealth were a problem, in that the rich would be tempted to form an oligarchy, while a poor underclass would vote to confiscate the property of the rich.

It was that sort of stable republic that political philosophers have sought through the ages, and which the Framers hoped to establish on the continent of North America.

We still don’t know if that’s a stable force. We do know that enormous discrepancies in wealth can cause great friction. On the other hand, despoiling the rich to buy votes from the poor was the great fear of the Framers, because throughout history that has led to bad results.

Product placement just for you

Jerry

Don’t like ads? Well, here’s product placement just for you (be sure to watch the video):

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/23/digital_advertising_futures/

No getting around it. Even the oldies are game. I won’t call it “fair game,” mind you. But somebody’s gotta pay for the content.

Ed