Category Archives: Mail

Mail 722 Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Paul Ryan talk to Georgetown, have you seen it"

This is the link

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/297054/paul-ryans-whittington-lecture-daniel-foster

I especially note

"We need a better approach.

To me, this approach should be based on the twin virtues of solidarity and subsidiarity – virtues that, when taken together, revitalize civil society instead of displacing it."

The whole talk is very good and on point.

R/Spike

Paul Ryan’s Whittington Lecture at Georgetown

This guy takes subsidiarity seriously.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/297054/paul-ryans-whittington-lecture-daniel-foster

Video:

http://www.c-span.org/Events/Rep-Paul-Ryan-Defends-Budget-at-Georgetown-University/10737430203/

>>Government is one word for things we do together. But it is not the only word.

We are a nation that prides itself on looking out for one another – and government has an important role to play in that. But relying on distant government bureaucracies to lead this effort just hasn’t worked.

Instead, our budget builds on the historic welfare reforms of the 1990s – reforms proven to work. We aim to empower state and local governments, communities, and individuals – those closest to the problem. And we aim to promote opportunity and upward mobility by strengthening job training programs, to help those who have fallen on hard times.<<

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Transparency and subsidiarity are both necessary for the survival of self-government. We seem dedicated to eliminating both. Or perhaps I am merely in a bad mood.

Alive?

You said "Why we did not take Bin Laden alive for interrogation has not been explained, and probably never will be."

Of course we know the answer, even if it is never officially stated.

Nothing we could do to interrogate him would pass muster for avoiding the faux war on terror standard of torture, including just holding him in solitary. We have no place to keep him which passes the legal and practical tests forced on us after the last presidential election, and even though we’ve not shut down Gitmo, just imagine the stink of putting UBL there. No, there was no advantage and plenty of problems for us if we took him alive, but no downside if he died.

I’ve been saying for a while I’m just not capable of understanding why it is worse to execute them than it is to take them alive and do to them what we do to every SEAL, Green Beret or pilot in our service. Yet doing what you are directed to do, with written opinions from the DoJ that it is legal won’t protect you from legal attacks later on. I wonder what effect that will have on national security?

You know it, I know it, and the Legions know it. That is not a good situation.

Apple & Corporate Taxes

I’ve been reading news articles about USA corporations "not paying taxes" since the early 80’s. Every single time when you get to the end of the piece you discover that the reality is almost the exact opposite of what the headline and the rest of the article implies. In this latest issue most of the posters aren’t even bothering to put the truth at the end. Now they entire piece is a mistatement.

In the USA corporations are required to pay income tax deposits throughout the year based upon the prior year’s taxes (unless they expect income to be less in the current year but in that case if you underpay you can be subject to penalties). Any additional taxes over the prior year are paid on March 15 with the tax return or the extension letter. In Apples case they are apparently comparing the current interim payments (based upon last year’s income) with the current year’s income which is much higher. A truly apples to oranges comparison. I think The Register had a piece explaining reality.

Apple apparently does take advantage of legal loopholes to lower their taxes but nowhere near the amount that certain sources are lying about.

In the 80’s and 90’s I used to see claims that all these large corporations "owed no taxes", implying they didn’t pay any corporate income tax despite large income. It was usually that the corporation paid their taxes in full during the year and didn’t owe anything on their tax return. Only in the media can paying your taxes in full equal not paying any taxes.

Gene Horr

No one has a moral obligation to overpay taxes; one may have moral obligations to pay back, to give to charities, to support public enterprises; but taxes generally do not do that, and when governments get money they spend more than they get, nor do they cut back when the income comes down. It is sinful to let the government have a dime more than you must give it, or so say some who have analyzed what government does with the money.

Subj: Lawyerly advocacy vs Science

An explication, based on a recent alarmist publication, of the distinction Dr. Pournelle has pointed out several times:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/29/from-schmidt-2005-to-miller-2012-the-not-needed-excuse-for-omitted-variable-fraud/

>>The anti-CO2 alarmists are behaving like lawyers in an adversarial

>>legal proceeding, hiding what hurts their own case while overstating

>>what can be fashioned in support. In the courts an adversarial system

>>is able to elicit a measure of truth only because there is a judge to

>>maintain rules of evidence and a hopefully unbiased jury examining the

>>facts. These conditions do not obtain in science. The anti-CO2

>>alarmists are both the peer-review jury and the judge/editors,

>>devolving into a pre-scientific ethic where acceptance is determined

>>by power, not reason and evidence.<<

Note also the reference and link to the 2005 exchange between Dr.

Pournelle and the alarmist Dr. Gavin Schmidt — search within the article for "Pournelle".

I did not re-read the Pournelle–Schmidt discussion carefully, only skimmed it. My impression is that the slight-of-hand concealment of the possibility that there might be solar effects *other* than Total Solar Irradiance comes through more clearly in the above-linked piece than in the original P–S discussion: in my skimming, I noticed only a single reference, at the very end of the archived web page containing the discussion (more of a postscript, actually), to the possibility of

magnetic-field->cosmic-ray->clouds effects.

Continuing in the above-linked piece:

>>Schmidt looks askance at GCR-cloud as “new physics,” but it isn’t new in any fundamental sense. The cloud micro-physics that Svensmark, Kirkby and others are looking at is presumed to follow established particle physics models. It is a new application of current physics. What Schmidt is really suggesting with his jaundiced eye is that we should be reluctant to extrapolate our current understanding of physical principles to illuminate the biggest scientific controversy of the day.

At the same time, he and Miller and the rest of the alarmists have introduced something that really is new and problematic. They are using model runs to test their hypotheses. They are using theory to test theory, with no empirical test needed. <<

After which the piece quotes at some length from the Shindell-Schmidt paper "a highly abridged description of the hypothetical steps that their model works through."

>>It is fine for people to be working on these models and trying to make progress with them, but to use them to make claims about what is actually happening in the world is insane, and using them as an excuse for ignoring actual empirical evidence is worse than insane.

This really is a new kind of science, and not one that stands up to scrutiny. We are being asked to turn our world upside down on the strength of the most elaborate speculations in the history of mankind, yet Schmidt thinks it is cloud microphysics—traditional science!—that should be eschewed. All to justify the destruction of the modern world, now well underway.<<

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Cheating In School

Jerry,

Apparently cheating in school has become a protected right, or is fast becoming one: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-school-cheat-20120427,0,1656872.story

Kevin L. Keegan

Given that the purpose of universities has changed enormously, so that most of them no longer have a goal of education but are run by Iron Law, the old notion of honor changes a lot. Getting grades in universities is now vital to one’s career because of credentialism, but the faculty is run by an entirely different moral. This is not a stable system.

Wind farms can cause climate change.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9234715/Wind-farms-can-cause-climate-change-finds-new-study.html

“The spatial pattern of the warming resembles the geographic distribution of wind turbines and the year-to-year land surface temperature over wind farms shows a persistent upward trend from 2003 to 2011, consistent with the increasing number of operational wind turbines with time,” said Prof Zhou.

Charles Brumbelow

Think of that! The old slow turning windmills that pumped water were an entirely different proposition; but now the high speed turbines generate electricity and kill birds, and the electricity pumps water. And the Iron Law prevails.

WOW, you will not believe the new Corning Glass!!! AMAZING!!

Jerry,

WOW, you will not believe the new Corning Glass!!! AMAZING!!

Enjoy the knowledge.

click on the BLUE GLASS below.

If you’re wondering why HP and others are dropping desktops etc., look at this. It’s called GLASS.

THE FUTURE IS ALMOST HERE WITH CORNING GLASS, AND THE IDEAS ARE MIND BOGGLING!

(Ignore the camera ad at the beginning!)

CLICK HERE GLASS <http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38&vq=medium>

Astonishing.

That which is not seen

Dr Pournelle

I have the Bastiat piece on my Kindle. It is the lead work in a volume entitled "The Economics of Freedom <http://www.amazon.com/The-Economics-Freedom-Professors-ebook/dp/B004QZ9X6M/> ".

In the chapter he titled ‘Restrictions’, Bastiat argues against import duties thus:

—–

[A French iron mill owner, M Prohibant, argues:]

"Belgian iron is sold in France at ten francs, which obliges me to sell mine at the same price. I should like to sell at fifteen, but cannot do so on account of this Belgian iron, which I wish was at the bottom of the Red Sea. I beg you will make a law that no more Belgian iron shall enter France. Immediately I raise my price five francs, and these are the consequences: "For every hundred-weight of iron that I shall deliver to the public, I shall receive fifteen francs instead of ten; I shall grow rich more rapidly, extend my traffic, and employ more workmen. My workmen and I shall spend much more freely to the great advantage of our tradesmen for miles around. These latter, having more custom, will furnish more employment to trade, and activity on both sides will increase in the country. This fortunate piece of money, which you will drop into my strong-box, will, like a stone thrown into a lake, give birth to an infinite number of concentric circles."

Charmed with his discourse, delighted to learn that it is so easy to promote, by legislating, the prosperity of a people, the law-makers voted the restriction. "Talk of labour and economy," they said, "what is the use of these painful means of increasing the national wealth, when all that is wanted for this object is a Decree?"

And, in fact, the law produced all the consequences announced by M. Prohibant; the only thing was, it produced others which he had not foreseen. To do him justice, his reasoning was not false, but only incomplete. In endeavouring to obtain a privilege, he had taken cognizance of the effects which are seen, leaving in the background those which are not seen. He had pointed out only two personages, whereas there are three concerned in the affair. It is for us to supply this involuntary or premeditated omission.

It is true, the crown-piece, thus directed by law into M. Prohibant’s strong-box, is advantageous to him and to those whose labour it would encourage; and if the Act had caused the crownpiece to descend from the moon, these good effects would not have been counterbalanced by any corresponding evils. Unfortunately, the mysterious piece of money does not come from the moon, but from the pocket of a blacksmith, or a nail-smith, or a cartwright, or a farrier, or a labourer, or a shipwright; in a word, from James B., who gives it now without receiving a grain more of iron than when he was paying ten francs. Thus, we can see at a glance that this very much alters the state of the case; for it is very evident that M. Prohibant’s profit is compensated by James B.’s loss, and all that M. Prohibant can do with the crown-piece, for the encouragement of national labour, James B. might have done himself. The stone has only been thrown upon one part of the lake, because the law has prevented it from being thrown upon another.

Therefore, that which is not seen supersedes that which is seen, and at this point there remains, as the residue of the operation, a piece of injustice, and, sad to say, a piece of injustice perpetrated by the law!

[emphasis added]

—–

I say it is M Bastiat’s reasoning which is incomplete. Bastiat assumes a theoretical, frictionless exchange. He assumes — and does not reveal his assumption — that Belgium 1) trades freely, 2) offers no gov’t bounties to ironmakers to lower the price of Belgian iron, 3) produces iron of quality equal to French iron, and 4) that Belgian workers’ pay equals French workers’ pay. There are likely other assumptions he makes that I have missed.

Bastiat took "cognizance of the [things] which are seen, leaving in the background those which are not seen." In this, he was as blind as all economists. He preferred the clean, linear world of theory to the dirty, chaotic world of reality.

The reality is that the French Parlement has a duty to secure prosperity to the French. The only economic means it has to do so in the instant case is import duties. (I suppose the French could invade Belgium, raze the iron factories there, and summarily execute all Belgian ironworkers, but that seems a trifle excessive even for the French. 😉 )

Pat Buchanan in an interview, "Suicide of a Superpower" <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GG1rFA_QEk> , articulated the case for tariffs better than I can. The interview is an hour long. Buchanan’s first rant against free trade begins 23 minutes in. The second begins 27 minutes in.

I shall close with my own observations. I have seen free trade benefit the wealthy. They can buy goods cheaper. I have seen free trade harm labor. They lose the competition for wages to the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indonesians. They could buy goods cheaper if they had the money, but they don’t have, and they won’t have. Labor become unemployed, become dependent on the gov’t for handouts, and lose all self-respect for themselves because they no longer work for their bread. Thus, the spirit of the Republic diminishes.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

Free trade works when applied with other free enterprises. It is not really free trade when you place enormous regulatory restrictions on your own labor force, then require your factories and labor to compete with imports that face no such regulations. And as Lincoln observed, if I buy a shirt from London, I have the shirt; but if I buy it from a mill in New England the money stays here and I can tax it.

On the other hand, without some free trade you get the situation of the US automobile industry prior to overseas competition; and the internal self destruction of an automobile industry that could not resist paying ever larger sums to those whose productivity was restricted by union rules.

The simple rule is “it’s complicated.” There is such a thing as hostile trade, as the Japanese discovered in Shogun times. But the political class does not think much past the next election. Given that reality, what is to be done? Regulations pile on through the Iron Law. Nations build structure with their wealth. The structure feeds itself and starves everyone else. Free trade is one weapon in slowing that.

As I said, it’s complicated.

USAF Air to air squadron of the year (Raytheon trophy) video – 67FS

Dr. Pournelle,

This video was put together in honor of the 2011 air to air squadron of the year (Raytheon award), the 67FS (F-15C). The video and especially the radio chatter is authentic, a better look at what we do than I’ve ever seen in an unclassified video. I used to do this for a living flying the F-15E instead of the F-15C, but the air to air mission was essentially the same and this video captures it very well.

http://vimeo.com/40935850

If anyone asks why I kept flying fighters after my back injury, I’ll just give them the link to this video.

Sean

Hurrah.

1992 LA Riots

Jerry,

I would hold the Media responsible for the 1992 LA Riots.

If the general public had been shown the same evidence that the Simi Valley jury was shown, the verdict would not have been a surprise.

After the first day or so after Rodney King’s arrest the LA TV Stations stopped showing the complete video of the "beating." The first five seconds or so showing Mr. King trying to get up we’re no longer shown.

The fact that there was a passenger in Mr. King’s car who followed instructions and was restrained without incident was no longer mentioned.

It was interesting to note a correction earlier this week in the LA Times. A story about the zing arrest said that he was handcuffed during the "beating." This was false, he was not handcuffed during the beating. The error occurred because a 1992 LA Times story inaccurately stated that he was.

This type of thing happens frequently. It would seem that much of this is done on purpose to make a story fit the agenda of the Reporter or the reporting entity. A current example is the NBC editing of the Zimmerman 911 call. An earlier one would be the 2004 60 Minutes 2 piece by Dan Rather with the rather obvious Bush National Guard forgeries.

(Dan Rather, based on recent statements, still believes this documents are genuine.)

We as Citizens not only get the Government we deserve through our ignorance and inaction; we also get the type of media we deserve.

Bob Holmes

Steve Barnes asked me what I thought the police were doing in the Rodney King case. I said they thought they were beating hell out of a guy who had taken them on a dangerous high speed chase in a residential district.

If we insist on being guarded only by saints we will have few guardians. If we have few guardians we will have to guard ourselves. Few of us are saints.

The police sometimes get out of control. I was once part of those who watch the watchers – that is, I was Executive Assistant to the Mayor. I went out to police precincts and into problem situations to see what was happening.

If we insist that only saints are fit to guard us, we will have few guardians. It would be nice if it were different.

Jerry: Memory capacity of the human mind.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/04/the-human-minds-raw-capacity.html

Unfortunately, my neurons seem to be used for ad jingles and 60’s TV trivia.

Chris C=

Since the cancer treatments my memory has been unreliable, and sometimes humourously so. My only compensation is the knowledge that my lousy data retrieval system now is about what Niven has had for the forty years I have known him. That gives me a bit of hope…

drudge malware

Jerry,

Careful going to drudge report. It’s serving up at least one and maybe two bits of malware. At least that’s what seems to be happening. It’s fairly convincing too. If microsoft security essentials hadn’t reacted, the malware appeared at first glance to be a MSIE feature, stopping a pop-up and offering to block something bad.

In any case, drudge isn’t safe right now.

And apparently fixed. This happens periodically. Fortunately Windows Live Security seems to work pretty well. But I don’t go to Drudge. One advantage of being me is that if something really interesting happens one of my readers will tell me. And I read all my mail in plaintext.

Korea Today

Pohang, Korea

Dr Pournelle

Pohang lies on the east coast of Korea and straddles the Hyeongsan River. <http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=39547> That big reverse L in the middle of the photo is the POSCO steel mill. All the red-colored area belongs to POSCO. The docks south of the mill (to the left of the mill in the photo) belong to POSCO, too. AFAIK the navy yard lies along the Hyeongsan River.

North of the river, Pohang is all residential and tourist districts: restaurants, bars, hotels, and coffee shops dominate the bayside.

South of the river, POSCO owns or controls every square meter. (POSCO used to mean POhang iron and Steel COmpany, but, like AT&T, the acronym became the company name.) Depending on when or whom you ask, POSCO is either the fifth or the third largest maker of steel in the world.

I am visiting Pohang this weekend. The water along the beach is clean and warm, and the beach slopes gently into the bay: 50 meters out I am only chest-deep in the sea. Because the bay is sheltered by the headlands to the south and north, the waters of the bay are flat and rollers rise about 30cm (1 ft) at the beach. I was sitting in one of the numerous coffee shops along the boardwalk when I noticed something. Actually I noticed something missing.

Pollution.

Up to three fingers above the horizon, the air is dusty brown, but the air is dusty brown all over Korea at this time of year because of the yellow dust that blows here from China. (They don’t call it the Yellow River for nothing.) There was a whisper of smoke from the smokestacks at POSCO. If you look again at the photo, you will NOT see a blanket of smoke over the steel mill. Look close enough and you may see a whisp of smoke from the mill extending over the river. But you can see the city of Pohang clearly.

Here’s my point.

I remember pollution. I remember brown skies and black water. I remember weathermen warning us to stay inside. I remember Lake Erie burning. The kids don’t have those memories. The kids have been told all their lives that their air and their water is polluted and that the leetle innocent animals are dying from it and that it is our fault.

I sit a mile from one of the world’s largest operating steel mills, and I look up, and I see blue, blue sky. Within a mile of that same mill, I have enjoyed the clean, warm waters of Pohang Bay.

Draw your own conclusions.

As for me, please tell the fearmongers to sell panic somewhere else. I ain’t buying any.

A Correspondent in Korea.

Just right?

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9230801/Astronomers-find-new-planet-capable-of-supporting-life.html>

Roland Dobbins

Subject: World Digital Library

Jerry,

Presumably, most of the visitors to Chaos Manor know of this site already, but I ‘rediscovered’ it for myself recently, and thought it would be nice to remind them.

http://www.loc.gov/wdl/

http://www.wdl.org/en/

Tracy

.

“All histories of Rome are histories of empire.”

<http://nationalinterest.org/bookreview/singular-empire-6815?page=show>

Roland Dobbins

The Republic began to change with the incorporation of Sardinia and the parts of Sicily that were ruled rather than admitted to citizenship. Once Romans learned to rule without consent of the governed they applied that principle to others. Over time an empire, still without an emperor, took shape; but that sort of thing is very unstable. Then came Marius and the Gallic invasions, and —

Cardboard Korea

I’ve often said North Korea is like a movie display with cardboard backing.  Still, they have many hungry people that could invade the south in search of groceries.  While they would not hold South Korea forever, they could create serious problems.  Without outside help, I doubt they could sustain a war.  I’m sure the Chinese want to keep their conscripts alive:

<.>

North Korean missiles that were paraded as part of the 100th anniversary celebrations of the country’s founding father, are probably fakes.

The weapons which were showcased to mark Kim Il Sung birthday were heavily criticised by researchers who insisted they would be unable to fly let alone defend the country from potential attacks.

That conclusion has cast further doubt on the country’s claims of military prowess after its recent rocket launch failure.

</>

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135727/Missiles-paraded-North-Korea-fake-say-scientists.html?ITO=1490

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I continue to marvel at the US lack of policy with regard to North Korea. Or perhaps we have one that I do not understand.

Mail 721 Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Subject: My Grandson is serving detention today….

Jerry,

My Grandson is serving detention after school today for disrupting his class by making a poster and showing it to a girl he liked during a lecture. I’m trying going to have to try to remain stern with him when he returns home, but it’s going to be hard. He drew a picture of a ‘thumbs up’ on a sheet of paper, then printed in big block letters on the paper “Like Me… I’m a Facebook status!” (I included a PDF of it for you).

I had to tell you about it, because it’s pretty clear that Facebook is not only mainstream in the culture, but when he compared himself to a Facebook status, AND did it on paper….. it’s just pervasive.

(MY apologies: what was easy under FrontPage has become nightmarishly complex with LiveWriter and ridiculous when using Word and LiveWriter. They keep improving things to the point of insanity. Anyway, there is the expansion of the pdf).

When Niven and I were doing Mote we were trying to describe a world in which people had pocket computers and used them routinely, but we did not think of stories like this. Signs of the times indeed.

Journal pricing

http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k77982&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup14344

Major Periodical Subscriptions Cannot Be Sustained

Harvard complaining about journal pricing.

Chris C

When CD ROM came out I pointed out that journal costs could quickly become trivial; but in fact they got more expensive. It is of course the Iron Law at work. And the government will subsidize those who “need” those journals, so the prices will continue to rise.

Supernovae and Life

Dr. Pournelle —

Fascinating possibility!

Did exploding stars help life on Earth to thrive?

http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/219-news-2012/2117-did-exploding-stars-help-life-on-earth-to-thrive

"Research by a Danish physicist suggests that the explosion of massive stars – supernovae – near the Solar System has strongly influenced the development of life. Prof. Henrik Svensmark of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) sets out his novel work in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society."

"The director of DTU Space, Prof. Eigil Friis-Christensen, comments: ‘When this enquiry into effects of cosmic rays from supernova remnants began 16 years ago, we never imagined that it would lead us so deep into time, or into so many aspects of the Earth’s history. The connection to evolution is a culmination of this work.’ "

(Perhaps the stars have more to do with our lives than we thought.)

Pieter

Well, it may well be that cosmic rays have a lot to do with the temperature of the Earth; although the Warmer Believers do not seem to accept that. Or perhaps Poul Anderson’s Brain Wave was prophetic?

: Debtors Prisons?

This is horrible; a woman went to jail for $208 medical bill that she did not owe and was told she did not have to pay:

<.>

Under the law, debtors aren’t arrested for nonpayment, but rather for failing to respond to court hearings, pay legal fines, or otherwise showing "contempt of court" in connection with a creditor lawsuit. That loophole has lawmakers in the Illinois House of Representatives concerned enough to pass a bill in March that would make it illegal to send residents of the state to jail if they can’t pay a debt. The measure awaits action in the senate.

"Creditors have been manipulating the court system to extract money from the unemployed, veterans, even seniors who rely solely on their benefits to get by each month," Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said last month in a statement voicing support for the legislation. "Too many people have been thrown in jail simply because they’re too poor to pay their debts. We cannot allow these illegal abuses to continue."

</>

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jailed-for–280–the-return-of-debtors–prisons.html

Laws are so many and so complex who even has time to read them all?  Lawyers all specialize in areas of law because so many laws exist that they can’t even be expected to know them all.  This is a joke!

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

The stones are hard in debtor’s yard…

Your point about the multiplication of the laws is correct. It is now estimated that most middle class adults commit three Federal felonies a day, but few are aware of them. When the law is that complex it is not law at all; it merely puts everyone’s liberty at the discretion of the authorities. In his impeachment of Warren Hastings over Hastings’ activities in governing India, Edmund Burke said “Mr. Hastings pleads that he had discretionary power, and he used it. I put it to your Lordships that he had not discretionary power, and indeed your Lordships have not descretionary power to give.” Burke’s point was that discretionary power was the antithesis of the rule of law, and rule of law was the constitution of England. He was sympathetic with the American cause for similar reasons.

The Framers were very much aware of this. But those who will not learn history are doomed to repeat it…

And now a short break:

QM_is_actually_a_hardware_problem.png

Jerry

Abstruse Goose is similar to xkcd. Here we learn that QM is actually a hardware problem:

http://abstrusegoose.com/strips/QM_is_actually_a_hardware_problem.png

Ed

Subject: Pentagon explains why hypersonic, Mach 20 drone failed

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/23/pentagon-explains-why-hypersonic-mach-20-drone-failed/

Tracy

Subject: Skin-peeling doomed Hypersonic glider

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/23/skin-peeling-speeds-doomed-hypersonic-glider-u-s-says/?hpt=hp_t3

Tracy

And earlier Roland wrote

Unobtanium still unobtainable – it only cost us taxpayers $320,000.000.00 to verify that seemingly self-evident notion.

<http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-darpa-hypersonic-missile-20120420,0,4564567.story>

Spending that money on bunny inspectors makes more sense, IMHO.

—

Roland Dobbins

Which sums it up nicely. We have known since the NASP experiments that you do not want to be at hypersonic velocities in the atmosphere any longer than you have to be, which is why the Ramjet/Rocket hybrid route to orbit, which seems to attractive in theory, doesn’t work; which, to go a step farther, is why the kitchen cabinet group I chaired proposed SSX, See

Farewell to Space-Faring View 682 20110705-2

And

THE SSX CONCEPT

We have a lot of mail on this:

Excellent Space News

WOW, this is good!  James Cameron is really starting to impress me as a guy who has his priorities straight; both he and I are explorers and, if I had his money, I would be doing many of the same things he is doing e.g. going to the bottom of the sea and, now, venturing into space!  I’d also get a ride on one of those new Virgin Atlantic volcano rigs that can go into an active volcano — I sent you an email with links to that new company and their vehicles weeks or months ago.  

<.>

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and billionaire co-founder Larry Page have teamed up with "Avatar" director James Cameron and other investors to back an ambitious space exploration and natural resources venture, details of which will be unveiled next week.

The fledgling company, called Planetary Resources, will be unveiled at a Tuesday news conference at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, according to a press release issued this week.

</>

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/google-execs-director-cameron-space-venture-005212432–sector.html

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Asteroid Mining?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303513404577356190967904210.html

Ian Perry

Subj: Google+Cameron=Asteroid Mines!!!!!

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/google-execs-director-cameron-space-venture-005212432–sector.html

Jim

I will comment at greater length when I know more. A Step Farther Out has a a lot about asteroid resources, and my EXILE TO GLORY novel is set in a future about 2025 when we have asteroid mines and some spacefaring civilization travel.

Aether

Jerry

The Michelson-Morley Experiment always struck me as very much like the Objection of the Headwinds, advanced by Aristotle, Ptolemy, and others against the rotation of the Earth.

The ancients were well aware that if you stood in a speeding chariot, you would experience a headwind. If the Earth moved toward the east diurnally, the speed would be much greater than that of a chariot and the headwind that much stronger. Nicholas Oresme, in the 14th century, expressed the objection this way:

If the earth is so moved, it makes a complete turn in a single natural day. Therefore, we and the trees and houses are moved toward the east very swiftly, and so it should seem that the air and wind blow continuously and strongly from the east, [much] as it does against a quarrel shot, [only] much more strongly. But the contrary appears by experience.

To which he gave the answer:

To the second experience, according to this opinion, the response is: Not only is the earth so moved [diurnally], but with it water and the air, as was said, in such a way that the water and lower air are moved differently than they are by winds and other causes. It is like this situation: If air were enclosed in a moving ship, it would seem to the person situated in this air that it was not moved.

With no concept yet of inertia, force, et al., he could not explain why the air and oceans (and people) should share Earth’s motion. Indeed, it was not until Gugliemini dropped balls from the tower of Bologna in the 1790s and measured the Coriolis effect that the rotation of the Earth was empirically established. It seemed to me that the Michelson-Morley experiment was the old Aristotelian Objection of the Headwinds.

Why they expected an aether wind at all, I have no idea. According to Aristotle, the aether is by definition an invisible, incorruptible body, with little in common with ordinary matter. It cannot be acted upon by ordinary matter; and acts on ordinary matter (and our senses) only indirectly. The nature of aether is knowable by argument, not by experience. (Which is sounding a bit like dark matter or the quantum vacuum, now that I think on’t.) MM may have destroyed the modern "Lorenzian ether," but it never laid a glove on the Aristotelian aether.

MikeF

I have been doing considerable reading on special relativity and I am now convinced that it is wrong. By wrong I mean that every experiment it explains can be explained by something a great deal simpler, and by Occam’s Razor we have no need of special relativity. And spectroscopic binaries seem to impose a mountainous difficulty for special relativity, requiring a very great deal of complex explanation, while a much simpler theory – Beckmann’s notion of “aether” as a local gravitational field – gives the same result with algebra.

Of course I am hardly the person to proclaim the non-necessity of special relativity; but I do wonder if we need it.

Turing’s rapid Nazi Enigma code-breaking secret revealed

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/23/turing_papers_released/

Turing’s rapid Nazi Enigma code-breaking secret revealed

Maths homework kept in GCHQ vault for 70 years

By Anna Leach <http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2012/04/23/turing_papers_released/>

Posted in Government <http://www.theregister.co.uk/public_sector/government/> , 23rd April 2012 07:26 GMT <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/23/>

Blighty’s communications eavesdropping nerve centre GCHQ has issued two papers written by superboffin Alan Turing on the maths behind code-breaking.

The documents, held in secret for 70 years, laid the foundations for the quick and efficient decryption of Nazi Enigma-scrambled messages – a breakthrough that lopped about two years off the duration of the Second World War.

The papers were donated on Friday to The National Archive <http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/default.htm> [1] in Kew, Surrey, where they will be available to view on request. An archives spokesperson said demand to see Turing’s work is high, but there is no plan to put it online.

The GCHQ mathematician who handed over the documents, named only as Richard, told the BBC <http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17771962> [2] that the agency had now "squeezed the juice" out of the two papers and was "happy for them to be released into the public domain". The move coincides with the 100th anniversary of Turing’s birth on 23 June this year.

The two typewritten papers feature Turing’s hand-scribbled notes, and are titled On Statistics of Repetitions and The Applications of Probability to Cryptography.

Excerpt from Turing paper, credit: National Archive scan <http://regmedia.co.uk/2012/04/20/turing_paper_2.jpg>

Turing the tables on Nazi encryption – click for the full page [3]

The statistics paper describes how examining repeated characters in two encrypted messages can prove that both passages use the same encipherment key. The cryptography essay is longer and applies rigorous probability analysis to code-breaking methods and techniques.

The mathematical workings are given a little historical piquancy when Turing uses life expectancy to examine conditional probability, taking Hitler – then aged 52 – as an example. It dates the paper to between April 1941 and April 1942.

According to GCHQ’s Richard, the papers used "mathematical analysis to try and determine the more likely settings [for the crypto key] so that they can be tried as quickly as possible".

The agency added that the message decryption rate achieved by wartime code-breakers at Bletchley Park was "almost certainly enabled by the techniques in this paper". More details on Turing’s newly revealed work can be found here <http://www.gchq.gov.uk/Press/Pages/turing-papers-released.aspx>

A gripping story.

Equality

"that all men are created equal": the Great Lie in the US Declaration of Independence. The Great Lie, because it is patently and obviously untrue.

Some people simply are superior to others. Was the opinion of Albert Einstein (who, I believe, became a US citizen) of equal value to Joe Epsilon Minus?

Ian Campbell

But of course it is untrue and those who signed the document knew that at least as well as you do. It was to be the agreed axiom: not a truth but an agreed axiom.

That was my point.

The problem comes when you assume that an axiom is actually to be regarded as true.

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

Quite. I suspect that at least some of the Founders would like to have added "in the eyes of God" in the appropriate place, which would have made the matter clear. However, although my knowledge of American constitutional history is limited (and why shouldn’t it be – I’m British?) I do believe that at least some of them were atheist or at least Deist rather than formally religious, and that may be the reason why that phrase was not included.

A larger point is that any form of democratic rule only works well when the voters understand the issues and are prepared to take the time to think about them. For far too many people in the USA, and also in the UK to be fair, one or both of those conditions do not apply.

Someone truly cynical might think that the parlous state of the educational system in both of our countries is deliberately designed to keep it that way.

Regards

Ian Campbell

You turned me on to Kipling, and for that I thank you. Now I read a Kipling poem or two each day. Today’s read:

 

A Servant When He Reigneth

 

Three things make earth unquiet

And four she cannot brook

The godly Agur counted them

And put them in a book —

Those Four Tremendous Curses

With which mankind is cursed;

But a Servant when He Reigneth

Old Agur entered first.

An Handmaid that is Mistress

We need not call upon.

A Fool when he is full of Meat

Will fall asleep anon.

An Odious Woman Married

May bear a babe and mend;

But a Servant when He Reigneth

Is Confusion to the end.

His feet are swift to tumult,

His hands are slow to toil,

His ears are deaf to reason,

His lips are loud in broil.

He knows no use for power

Except to show his might.

He gives no heed to judgment

Unless it prove him right.

Because he served a master

Before his Kingship came,

And hid in all disaster

Behind his master’s name,

So, when his Folly opens

The unnecessary hells,

A Servant when He Reigneth

Throws the blame on some one else.

His vows are lightly spoken,

His faith is hard to bind,

His trust is easy boken,

He fears his fellow-kind.

The nearest mob will move him

To break the pledge he gave —

Oh, a Servant when he Reigneth

Is more than ever slave!

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

California Nightmarin’

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304444604577340531861056966.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

"Its [personal] income tax is steeply progressive. Millionaires pay a top rate of 10.3%, the third-highest in the country. But middle-class workers—those who earn more than $48,000—pay a top rate of 9.3%, which is higher than what millionaires pay in 47 states."

Charles Brumbelow=

Alas

A message from the Believers to the Deniers

‘Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn.’

<http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevezwick/2012/04/19/a-tennessee-firemans-solution-to-climate-change/>

Forbes Magazine, ladies and gentlemen.

Roland Dobbins

—

 

Jerry,

When the scientists try to stifle contrary views, that might fall under "business as usual" even though it’s card to call it science. But when thy try to hide their own contrary data and analysis, or manipulate (or fabricate) data to achieve the desired results (e.g. the "hockey stick"), it is hard to avoid concluding that they are perpetrating a hoax.

I have no doubt that Gore is motivated by the billions a year that his companies would make from carbon credit trading rather than by any sense that he’s saving the planet.

Anon

Anonymity is advisable…

First contact based on space probe

In Mail 721 Tuesday, April 17, 2012 B asked about a novel where first contact followed alien discovery of a terrestrial space probe. It isn’t a novel, but the Larry Niven short story Like Banquo’s Ghost probably qualifies.

Doug

Douglas Stuart

Written in 1968. Niven and I were present when the Plaque idea for Pioneer was implemented.

A Sad Statemtent on Space

I hope this is just bitter cynicism and not indicative of our future.  If so, this is sad, and — yes — if this is the case, my son will be studying Russian and Chinese.  

<.>

When asked for advice Tuesday by a WUSA9 reporter, former Discovery astronaut Dr. Anna Fisher told a boy watching the shuttle, “Study Russian.”

</>

http://freebeacon.com/obama-ruins-kids-day/

This is so sad.  We wasted our money on socialist largess and now we might be stuck here with these creeps.  I wonder how hard it will be to stow away on a rocket off this rock?  But, we’ll see how things work when my generation takes the helm.  Maybe we can pull this one out of the fire and let these socialist creeps fall by the wayside where they belong.  

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

.Of course it might be bad advice. Studying Chinese might be more effective.

Video: ‘If I Wanted America to Fail’

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/22/video-if-i-wanted-america-to-fail/

This is a powerful video with an unrelenting tempo and one line at the end, "If I wanted America to fail I…I suppose I wouldn’t change a thing."

Just watch it. Think about it. Recommend it to your friends. And be sure to give it a thumbs up.

If we fail, the richest among us won’t fail. They’ll move to where failure is not the mode of the day. The rest of us will be stuck here in an ever worsening condition. All we have to do to ensure this is . . . . . nothing, not a single damn thing.

{^_^}

Mail 721 Saturday, April 21, 2012

Equality

"that all men are created equal": the Great Lie in the US Declaration of Independence. The Great Lie, because it is patently and obviously untrue.

Some people simply are superior to others. Was the opinion of Albert Einstein (who, I believe, became a US citizen) of equal value to Joe Epsilon Minus?

Ian Campbell

But of course. Do you really think that Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, were unaware that in the real world men are not equal, either in potential or in realization of their talents, or in moral worth? Do you believe an experienced soldier doesn’t know very well that his troopers are not equal? Yet we made that an axiom of the Republic.

An axiom. Which is to say, we agreed not to question that as a principle. All are equal before the law, as opposed to England where some could be tried only by their peers, or in Visigothic Spain where there were categories of citizenship, or in Rome where there were Patricians and Plebians, or – well, I needn’t belabor the point. For good or ill, we contracted to the notion that people are equal. But that works both ways, or should.

What we have done is take a self-evidently limited axiom and tried to stretch it beyond all limits, then pretend that everyone really and truly is equal, and there must be equality of outcome as well as of opportunity.

Now as a matter of theology, all men as seen by God may very well be of equal worth; and we wrote that into the Declaration also. We postulated that there is a morality external to our wishes, and we agreed to act as if we believe that to be true.

As to the value of citizens, that is a much different question. What does it mean, value? And to whom? In some cultures the legitimate children of some fathers are definitely worth more than their illegitimate children who are in turn worth more than the children legitimate or not of less favored fathers. That we rejected.

No, all are not equal, and some are more valuable to the Republic than others, and we have always had the good sense to act that way; but we have also had the good sense not to dig too deeply into what we mean by equality and worth.

When I was young I thought and said that I thought that the law should be colorblind. This wasn’t a popular view among the adults around me in legally segregated Memphis, and I was thought a hopeless left-winger (at a time when I had no understanding of what that meant). As I grew older I never changed that view, and now I am thought a hopeless right-winger, although I am not sure what that means either. I once told one of my pre-law students who had been admitted to UCLA Law School under a minorities program to go back and tell them to stuff it: I wouldn’t have recommended him if I didn’t think he deserved acceptance, not as a black man, but as a hard working student who applied himself and would do well in law school. I never expected him to be in the top half of his class, but then not everyone will be. But he deserved to be accepted on his merits, not on the merit of being black.

And that is what I mean by equality.

Aristotle teaches us that injustice consists of treating equal thing unequally, but also of treating unequal things equally. We need to be careful what we mean by “created equal”, and we certainly cannot separate created equal from a Creator; but we long ago agreed to that, as we agreed that just powers of government come from the consent of the governed.

Diversity and the melting pot.

Jerry,

I believe that at one time before one could become a naturalised American it was necessary to have some grasp of the English language. Dropping this rule was very unwise. My job seeking Californian friend tells me that being bilingual in English and Spanish is now required by most employers. For a country to establish enclaves of people who do not speak the language of the country is very divisive.

As to Fred Reed on the black population, I expect that you are both correct. I surmise that the blacks that you meet are, pigmentation aside, no different from the whites that you meet. Fred spent a lot of time as a crime reporter riding in the police cars that patrolled the ghettos, and saw the worst side of the black population. Given inspired teaching some ghetto children can reach the middle classes but they, and the teaching that they need are in short supply. Read Fred’s cop columns if you are skeptical.

Then there is the great evil of positive discrimination. A black who has the talent and determination to rise in his profession will encounter quite reasonable doubts as to whether he rose because of his innate qualities or because, being short of the black quota, he was selected because he was the best black available.

John Edwards

RE: Diversity vs. the Melting Pot

Thank you thank you thank you! Why? For actually articulating the real problem that the Pollyanish left and ‘Derbyshire’ right refuse to concede: that the disintegration of the culture is the real problem, and not cognitive gaps, racism, etc.

As near as I can tell, blacks were doing just fine at assimilating into the middle class right up until LBJ and the Great Society basically blew that apart and set blacks (and America) back decades.

That this is very rarely mentioned is both galling and frustrating, and I thank you furiously for being one of the (very) few commentators actually pointing it out. If only you could get everyone else singing from the same hymnal, we might be able to have a sane, reasonable, discussion that we *need* to have.

Thanks again,

ECM

The evidence from the academies in New York and other places is that there are plenty of blacks willing and able to be assimilated into the Republic, and that this is desirable. The rejection of assimilation is a terrible tragedy. When the American culture is gone then e pluribus unum will be gone as well.

Excellent essay today.

It included this: " Yet there’s hope: there are the projects in Harlem, and Chicago, which insist on excellence in education, and which succeed, often startlingly well. You don’t see much about them in the media. Once in a while 60 Minutes will focus on such an institution, but mostly they don’t, and there’s a reason. They emphasize discipline, good grooming, politeness, and cultural assimilation along with rigorous education. And they work. They are turning out Americans who are black. And thus they are all but ignored by the liberal intellectuals."

I have seen reports on these projects and agree that they are conspicuous by their undeniable success, by general lack of widespread reporting on them in the media, and a visceral hatred shown them by the ‘education establishment’. On the other hand, the hundred odd years of empirical data that Fred refers to is still empirical data.

Unfortunately, I suspect that by demonstrating that dedicated, skilled instructors who insist on excellence and enforce classroom discipline can move the bell curve of black achievement one SD to the right, what is really demonstrated is that dedicated, skilled instructors who insist on excellence and enforce classroom discipline can take a population whose IQ bell curve peaks at 85 and instill in it what is considered to be an excellent education by our educational establishment. I also suspect, but with no supporting data other than the hundred years of data cited by Fred, that if caucasian students were ‘subjected’ to the same ‘enforce discipline and push the students to the limit’ educational environment, rather than being immersed in a culture of ‘no child left behind’ that their ‘results’ bell curve would move one SD to the right of the the black results bell curve. And if a group of Ashkenazic Jews were similarly subjected, their results bell curve would in turn peak approximately one SD to the right of the general caucasian peak. Just as a century of empirical data has consistently indicated.

Bob Ludwick

You miss the point. So what? The nation does not require that everyone be above average. It does require a certain minimum of acculturation. The academic results show that those willing to become Americans can do so. That may not be all of the young blacks. I wouldn’t know. I do know that it has been adequately demonstrated that significant numbers of young blacks respond to hard work and discipline despite some wide spread assumptions that this can’t happen.

We need as many Americans as we can get. We do not need diversity.

The High Ground

Dear Jerry;

Last week this outcropped on Chaos Manor:

"Himalayan glaciers actually GAINING ice, space scans show:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/16/himalayan_karakoram_glaciers_gaining_ice/

An inconvenient truth?

Ed

Which is hardly astonishing since glacier formation is far more dependent on rainfall and moisture content than temperature. Actually, warmer climates ought to be wetter, shouldn’t they? Which would mean more snowfall and glaciers which should mean more reflectivity which should mean cooling which – but I am not a climate modeller. I would have thought that kind of loop would be built into the models, though."

Your comments are apposite, but having ranged several of the glaciers in question, especially the Raikot, I feel obliged to point out the obvious- With major peaks above 25,000 feet, the monsoon fed glaciers between Nanga Parbat , K2 and Kargil are so high as to defy vertical migration of the frost line – global warming is not about to thaw the Death Zone anytime soon.

Incidentally , the scariest bergschund tongue on Nanga Parbat has a bridge over it, and consists , in season, of a clanking down escalator made up of house sized rocks barely lubricated with ice. You <i> really<.I>don’t want to go down there!

Russell Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics

Harvard University

Fabrication of a witness in the Zimmerman-Martin shooting.

Jerry;

There is some really good web sleuthing occurring on this case.

http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2012/04/21/update-10-part-2-the-trayvon-martin-shooting-deedee-reveals-the-false-truths/#more-37932

I expect Zimmerman to be suing the Martin family lawyers under state and federal RICO statutes.

Jim Crawford

IOM Report on Autism & Childhood Vaccination

http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2011/Adverse-Effects-of-Vaccines-Evidence-and-Causality/Report-Brief.aspx?page=2=

Autism & Childhood Vaccines

Hi Jerry-

Fifteen years ago, when my children were in the vaccination cohort, I carefully reviewed the evidence regarding autism and exposure to childhood vaccines. At that time, there was rather convincing evidence that exposure to vaccines did not increase the risk of autism. Since that time, additional evidence has accumulated that there is no relationship between vaccine exposure and autism. I am unaware of any credible evidence to the contrary. If there is evidence that now shows that vaccine exposure has the effect of increasing autism risk, I’d be greatly interested in looking at it.

Best,

-Steve=

I do not believe it is a good idea to give 25 vaccinations all at once, as they used to do. There needs to be some sanity in this business.

I have a great deal of mail on this.

Gold Record on Pioneers

“It occurred to me I have never read any novels about a race that discovers one of our probes which exited the solar system, then did a search to find us based upon the gold record.

Do you know of any (and I mean good ones, not a hack novel).

I recall the First Star Treck Film, but that does not count…

B”

L Ron Hubbard’s book Battlefield Earth has the planet attacked based on the Gold Records of the Pioneers.

Whether or not it’s a hack novel is not for me to say.

David March

Many others have pointed this out. Hubbard wrote science fiction adventure (indeed adventure of every conceivable genre – he was incredibly prolific) and much of it remains quite readable. The reputation of Battlefield Earth was not enhanced by the motion picture, which had a director afraid of his star, and who allowed the star to overact as many actors will do if the director will let them; the result was the injection of farcical scenes in a dramatic movie, and that never works. I thought the novel a bit long, but it certainly moved. Hubbard was a story teller.

Gold from Voyager

" It occurred to me I have never read any novels about a race that discovers one of our probes which exited the solar system, then did a search to find us based upon the gold record."

Well, there’s Battlefield Earth. Although it turned out that the gold was what they wanted all along, and if we’d done it on titanium or steel then they wouldn’t have bothered.

—

Mike T. Powers

» Climate Alarmist Calls For Burning Down Skeptics’ Homes Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!

Jerry,

Fallen Angels should become required reading.

http://www.infowars.com/climate-alarmist-calls-for-burning-down-skeptics-homes/

Jim Crawford

I wouldn’t mind that.

Pioneer anomaly solved?

<http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00003459/>

<http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.2507v1.pdf>

Roland Dobbins

That may well be. I have always hoped that the Pioneer anomaly would provide us with an interesting test of special relativity. As they get farther and farther from the Sun the gravitational field gets thinner; under Beckmann’s theory the speed of light changes as the medium changes, and the medium is the dominant gravitational field through which the light ray travels.

Beckmann has tried to revive the notion of an aether: it consists of the gravitational field, and it’s in that field that light waves ‘wave’. As the medium changes the speed of light changes (as it does when it goes into water or a glass prism). The gravitational field of the Earth is entrained (moves with the Earth) so the Michaelson-Morley experiment would not be expected to find any proper motion of the Earth through the aether. But that’s another essay for another time.

Harrison Bergeron-short film

I didn’t know if you were aware that someone had done an excellent short film adaptation on this story. You can watch it on youtube at the following link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7mftzcZfJ0

Craig Pruett

I had never seen that. Thanks.

Fred’s variation on HARRISON BERGERON

http://www.fredoneverything.net/LLA.shtml

This was posted last November but seems to fit.

Charles Brumbelow

HARRISON BERGERON – A Secondary Story

(Re)read this story and picked up a secondary story line.

"It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor."

Notice that the HG showed up quickly, and efficiently murdered the two dancers, without any hint of having been handicapped down to average…demonstrating once again that government functionaries are not subject to their own laws, rules, and regulations, and that subjects are not provided with due process One can reasonably infer that murder charges would not be filed against the HG.

Today a drone strike would probably be used…

Charles Brumbelow

Stand Your Ground law – part 2

Dear Jerry,

After Matthew wrote and quoted the statute, I did some research. The information I gave was based on the Diane Rehm Show, air date 3 April. The transcript can be found at http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-04-03/stand-your-ground-and-concealed-weapons-laws/transcript. The background on the reason for the law is given by John Velleco of Gun Owners of America :

MR. JOHN VELLECO

10:08:38

Well, Stand Your Ground laws were needed because people were being prosecuted for defending themselves with a firearm because of the principal of the duty to retreat, and people have — would have a duty to retreat in the face of attack and…

GJELTEN

10:08:57

Is that phrase duty to retreat actually written into law in many places?

VELLECO

10:09:02

Yes. That was written into several Supreme Court cases going back to the late 1800s. And it becomes a murky proposition when — did a person retreat enough? And people were being prosecuted and bankrupt defending themselves. Even if they were not convicted, they would end up being bankrupt by overzealous prosecutions and finding themselves victimized really twice, once by the criminal, once by the criminal justice system.

The statements on police limitations, by Elizabeth Megale of Barry University Law School, are as follows:

MEGALE

10:14:43

Prosecution begins with detention in Florida. Most other states don’t start prosecution with detention. But in the statute defining immunity from prosecution, we start the definition at detention, then custody, then arrest, which means someone cannot even be detained if there’s any evidence that they acted in self-defense. In the castle, again, you have this presumption of reasonable fear.

MEGALE

10:15:07

But even outside the castle, if there’s any evidence that shows that you had a reasonable fear, then you no longer have to establish that to a jury or even to a judge. The police are not entitled or allowed to arrest you until they can disprove this — that you were not in reasonable fear or — excuse me — until they can prove you were not in reasonable fear.

MEGALE

10:15:32

So that’s the problem with this — with the Trayvon Martin case, is that when the police arrived on scene, at least one version of the story is that Mr. Zimmerman had injuries consistent with his claims that he was acting in self-defense. And if that is the case and there was any evidence of that, the police are now in a position where they must disprove his claim of self-defense before they can even detain him.

So Matthew is, of course, correct, and I should have done more research before I wrote to you. Police were required to release Zimmerman, but not to cease investigating the incident. My apologies.

Regards,

Jim (still not related to Trayvon) Martin

Terry Pratchett-This is just sad

In today’s Britain, even a Knight must hide his sword.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs/sir-terry-pratchett-forges-a-sword-with-a-meteorite

Will there ever again be an England?

Cordially,

John

I guess there will never again be an England, and that is indeed sad.

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

I just now came across this:

http://io9.com/5903345/is-james-camerons-next-big-venture-asteroid+mining

and thought it would interest you. I’ve been waiting for this to happen ever since I read your first stories about it. Cameron may be a flake but Diamandis and the others seem like serious guys.

Regards,

Tim Scott=

We can hope.

.

Jerry,

This Henninger piece on Paul Ryan hits the nail straight on the head. I have been looking for someone to articulate my thoughts on this and it was a Pope from long ago.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304356604577337922580242292.html?KEYWORDS=paul+ryan

Ryan is on it…

rjw

Rod

‘Instead, they identify local businesses, like bagel shops and delis, that are not in compliance with the law, and then aggressively recruit plaintiffs from advocacy groups for people with disabilities.’

<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/nyregion/lawyers-find-obstacles-to-the-disabled-then-find-plaintiffs.html?&pagewanted=all>

Roland Dobbins

The Iron Law at work.

Mail 721 Thursday, April 19, 2012

If you have not seen this, it’s beautiful.

Spectacular solar eruption caught by NASA cameras

Wow!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2130954/Spectacular-solar-eruption-caught-Nasa-cameras.html

Wow indeed

Amazon updated books

Jerry

My understanding and experience with updated ebooks from Amazon is that you need to contact customer support to get the new version. I have received email from Amazon telling me that a new version was available. Amazon has stated that this is necessary because loading the new edition causes notes and highlighting to be lost.

Randy

Randy Cox

Thanks

Stand Your Ground law and the Zimmerman case

One of your earlier readers wrote (and you quoted):

"Apparently, the Florida law was written not just to protect against conviction for not running away from a threat, but to protect against the damage an unsuccessful prosecution can cause to those of us who are not wealthy. According to the broadcast, a determination of threat by responding LEOs prevents any further action on the subject. Under the law, the police were actually prohibited from further investigation once they concluded (rightly or wrongly) that Zimmerman reasonably felt threatened."

This is not correct, and it is in fact *specifically* contradicted by a plain language reading of the stand your ground law.

The law prohibits arresting or charging the victim in a self-defense case without probable cause that a crime was committed by the victim. The police are specifically allowed to complete a normal investigation to determine if the use of deadly force in self-defense was justified, they just can’t arrest the victim until they have probable cause.

The relevant statute is Fla. Stat. Section 776.032 (2005):

——

(1) A person who uses force as permitted in s. 776.012, s. 776.013, or s. 776.031 is justified in using such force and is immune from criminal prosecution and civil action for the use of such force, unless the person against whom force was used is a law enforcement officer, as defined in s. 943.10(14), who was acting in the performance of his or her official duties and the officer identified himself or herself in accordance with any applicable law or the person using force knew or reasonably should have known that the person was a law enforcement officer. As used in this subsection, the term “criminal prosecution” includes arresting, detaining in custody, and charging or prosecuting the defendant.

(2) A law enforcement agency may use standard procedures for investigating the use of force as described in subsection (1), but the agency may not arrest the person for using force unless it determines that there is probable cause that the force that was used was unlawful.

——

Clearly, section 2 authorizes the use of standard procedures for an investigation. They just can’t arrest, detain, charge, or prosecute until they develop probable cause from their investigation. This is a separate issue from whether a standard investigation was actually conducted in any specific case, of course; the point is, the law specifically authorizes investigation rather than prohibiting it. Arguably, specifying "standard procedures" means that you can’t suddenly intensify an investigation when your town is invaded by protestors… but I think I would consider that a feature, not a bug.

Matthew

I don’t profess to know. I presume much will come out at trial. I have yet to hear from a lawyer any praise for the prosecutor’s deposition.

If one of their executives is named "Lori Jo Hansen…."

http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/18/2957585/planetary-resources-space-exploration-company-james-cameron-google

They should at least give you a courtesy ride into orbit.

Heh. Thanks.

The Geostrategic Return of the Philippines

By Jim Thomas and Harry Foster

As the Obama administration executes its strategic “pivot” to the Western Pacific in the face of China’s military buildup, it is rediscovering the importance of a long-standing ally in the region. Like Gibraltar half a world away, the Philippines lie at a vital maritime crossroads through which passes more than half of the world’s shipping tonnage and 80 percent of crude oil shipments headed to Japan and South Korea.

The strategic importance of this archipelago nation is enduring. Over a century ago, the famed US naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan extolled the importance of the Philippines’ “narrow seas.” For much of the twentieth century, it played a central role in US strategy as a key logistics node for American air and naval forces and the geostrategic linchpin between East and Southeast Asia. <clip>

Entire text:

http://csba.createsend1.com/t/y-e-yukyjlt-pthdhdihl-r/

Worth reading.

"Normal" Holocene Weather

Jerry –

In Re: Craig’s comments about Mr. Tips’ assertion that we’ve returned to "Normal Holocene Weather" (and suggestion that Mr. Tips is the only source for such concept).

Searching on "Holocene Weather" (without the "Normal") reveals several sources that suggest that the notion that Holocene Weather can be typically characterized by extremes dates to at least a 1977 publication by H. H. Lamb (Climatic History and the Future) published by the Princeton Press. I found that reference (along with several others from the 1990s) in a paper at:

www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/boyd/AgOrigins.pdf

I’ve attached a copy for your convenience.

This, of course, doesn’t prove the notion, but it should absolve Mr. Tips from any suggestion that he created it from whole cloth.

Most glad to hear of your recovered spirits and energy,

David Smith

Thanks. I remember reading that when it first came out, now that your remind me. It has been said by others.

Normal Holocene weather

This is only more anecdotal evidence, not the reliable source you asked for, but my grandmother, growing up in Fredericksburg, Virginia at the turn of the last century, had ice-skates and skated every winter on frozen pools, if not actually on a frozen river. I grew up near there myself in the 1970’s, and I certainly had neither ice-skates nor the opportunity to use them. Obviously, I wasn’t there, to check her recollection, but I have seen her old ice-skates.

Meredith

Well, few of us remember the Holocene, although Niven and I have written about a time 14,000 years ago just after Atlantis sank when the magic was vanishing. (Burning City and Burning Tower). It’s fairly easy to document that it was much colder in 1776 (cannon dragged across the frozen Hudson to General Washington in Haarlem Heights) and the mid 19^th Century (winter markets held on Thames ice, skating on the brackish canals in Holland until late spring, etc.) I don’t think anyone doubts that it is warmer now than it was in the 19^th Century. The question is HOW MUCH warmer.

The Ring of Fire is becoming more active…

http://lewrockwell.com/rep3/ring-of-fire-roaring.html

I don’t know whether to blame George W Bush or climate change…

Charles Brumbelow

More active than when? Tambura went off early in the 19^th Century and produced the Year Without A Summer (eighteen hundred and froze to death). Krakatoa was pretty spectacular. And don’t forget the ‘Frisco Quake…

‘As work in Soviet archives in recent years has shown, Soviet secret policemen also usually meant what they said.’

<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/apr/26/vladimirs-tale/?pagination=false>

—-

Roland Dobbins

Putin is very much to be taken seriously. He is not a simple power grubber. He is far more serious than that. I have never understood what we gained in the Balkans when we defied the Russian pan-Slavic interests there.

My Boskone Skype interview with you is up on BYTE.com:

BYTE Interviews Jerry Pournelle

http://www.informationweek.com/byte/news/personal-tech/science-tech/232800459

(Byte.com, April 16, 2012)

(And here’s a shortened URL:

bit.ly/HKZhrc

In addition to the audio proper, the interview includes my intro, and the short bio and bibliography, and a transcript. (I did the transcribing myself, probably more work on the transcribing end, but much less on the ‘now what were they really saying’ end. I’m glad I spent the $79 for a USB foot-pedal that works with the free transcribing software).

BYTE split the interview up into four parts — fortunately, I was able to identify good-enough break points, so we/they didn’t have to try cutting-and-pasting audio.

Thanks again for being willing to do the Skype interview from your living room while still being under the weather. I know it made the Boskone program folks very happy to have still been able to have you on at least one program item even though you couldn’t attend in person.

(And I’m glad I brought along an inexpensive digital voice recorder — I had requested Boskone tech crew arrange for capture of the Skype session, but in the hurry and fuss, that request didn’t get to the right person.)

Hope you have recovered from your virus. It was fun talking with you again.

Daniel P. Dern

I’d rather have gone to BOSKONE and I hope to make it next year.

Raining Cats and Dogs

Saw this bit in the Washington Post, and thought of your recent slightly related piece:

http://live.washingtonpost.com/gene-weingarten-120417.html

Kit Case

Why Your Highway has Potholes

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303815404577333631864470566.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

I have an even better idea. Eliminate the gas tax and let the states pay for their own roads in whatever manor they choose.

Phil

Why is anyone surprised? The Iron Law guarantees these results.

It occurred to me I have never read any novels about a race that discovers one of our probes which exited the solar system, then did a search to find us based upon the gold record.

Do you know of any (and I mean good ones, not a hack novel).

I recall the First Star Treck Film, but that does not count…

B

I don’t offhand recall any stories other than V’ger with that theme, but in the real world, anyone who finds one of the Pioneers will be fairly close to Earth. It will be centuries before they are any large fraction of a lightyear away from Sol.

Have you read Harrison Bergeron?  I realized today that affirmative action is a move toward the world of Harrison Bergeron!  If you’re White in this country, you have a handicap placed against you in an effort to make everything "fair" and so everyone can "feel good about themselves".  So, if you’re too smart maybe we should make life a little more difficult for you so that dumb people can feel good?  Affirmative action is ridiculous in 2012; it may have served a purpose for old folks who are now dead, but it seem useless today. 

Like my teacher said, when we read this story as a class:   "We are our own Handicapper Generals and there is no escape."

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I have recommended Harrison Bergeron since it was first published, and one can forgive Vonnegut much for having written it.

: Everything old is new again…

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20120418.aspx

Cheap energy = prosperity!

Drill here, DRILL NOW!

David Couvillon

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

.

Young Mensan

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-17702463

—

* * *

"Mad Science" means never asking, "What’s the worst that could happen?"

–Schlock mercenary

That’s pretty young!

“Amazon wants the price of books to be very, very low — lower than the publishing community can support. Making a book is still a craft industry. Books need to be edited, to be publicized . . . ”

<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/business/media/amazons-e-book-pricing-a-constant-thorn-for-publishers.html?&pagewanted=all>

—-

Roland Dobbins

Neutron soup.

<http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/04/neutron-soup-pulsar-creates-new-alien-state-of-matter.html>

—-

Roland Dobbins